As usual, the fireworks didn't start until 11:00 PM. Us Americans think that's pretty late for a family event. But Paris is so far north that they have no choice: it's not dark enough until then. If you look at this first photo, taken around 23:03, you can still see a bit of fading evening light near the horizon in the sky behind the tower.
Also, the tower is bright scarlet because the French really know how to do spectacles. Not only do they shoot fireworks off of every part of the Eiffel Tower itself, but they also bring in a bank of nuclear-powered colored spotlights that swivel and change color like crazy all through the show. OK, maybe not nuclear-powered, but they sure seem like it!
A lot going off at one time in this one, while the sparkling lights were flashing all over the tower. In the photo, it looks like all of the sparkling lights are on at once.
Have you ever heard photographers talking about shooting "raw"? This is an example of the power of raw. In some raw photos, the parts of the photo in deep shadow still have a lot of detail and color. If we brighten it a lot, we see the leafy green trees along the sides of the Champs de Mars and the crowd in the foreground, with a thousand mobile phones held high. It almost looks like a fireworks show in daylight.
If you ever get a chance to come see this show, you really ought to seize the day! At a full half hour every year, the show is really satisfying, with one cool idea after another lighting up the sky.
Overexposing for the fun of it on this one. Almost looks like the Aurora Borealis. All that colorful smoky-looking stuff in the sky is just that, the smoke of the previous fireworks. The colors in the smoke come from being lit by those "nuclear-powered" spotlights.
Back to reality, unreal as it may seem.
It was hard to choose a final image to cap off the series, but here's what I picked. From what I've heard, everyone seems to have a different favorite.
Hope you enjoyed the second installment of 2017's Paris "feu d'artifice." Click here to see Bastille Day Fireworks, Part 1.
You might also like these fireworks photo galleries from previous years. Each set is different, since each was taken from a different location around Paris.
