skyshow 2006

SAFM's Skyshow 2006...

100 Man Hours Administration
50 Man Hours Designing & Programming the Display
300 Man Hours On Site Labour
3000m of Data Cable
2 Computer Controllers
80 Firing Modules
20 Tonnes of Fireworks & Equipment
Over 2650 Firing Cues
30 minutes

And 66 very fuzzy photos...

Okay, so my decision to go down and photograph the Skyshow fireworks didn't exactly work out to plan... every single shot had obvious handshake on it... on some of the shots it's almost rhythmic... like my heartbeat or my breathing... but on quite a few of the shots I actually kind of like the effect...

Backing up slightly... I should probably explain Skyshow... lifting from Wikipedia...

Beginning in 1985, Skyshow is an annual fireworks event held in Adelaide, South Australia. The half-hour fireworks display is synchronised to pop music and presented by local commercial radio station SAFM.

That about sums it up really... it's an institution, but it's kinda daggy... but then SAFM is pretty daggy too... (although I will admit, I have the radio on at the moment, tuned to SAFM, because they're playing all the songs that went into the mix tonight... and oooh... they're playing Mickey... the original Toni Basil version... damn I love that song!)

Damn those 80's childhood flashbacks...

I've been to Skyshow once, not counting tonight... with a big group of friends... but the year Ludo and I lived in the apartment on Jeffcott Street, he and I sat on the balcony with the stereo cranked up and watched it from there, since our place backed onto the parklands where the fireworks come from... we missed a little bit of the "low" stuff, but it was fun anyway.

Because I'm so close to where it happens, usually I stop whatever I'm doing when it's on and tune into SAFM, if only to listen to the mix they use, since it's usually fairly decent. If I stand on my bed and look out of the bedroom window I can usually see the very top bits of the fireworks, although even if I don't I can hear all the bangs.

But since I have a digital camera this year I figured I wasn't going to lose anything by going down and taking some shots... so I tuned my mobile's radio to SAFM, plugged in the headphones and took off... and since some of the best vantage points are on my walking route, it wasn't like I was flailing around not knowing where I was going...

Although, having said that, the first place I did stop turned out to be the wrong place for getting an uninterrupted view of the fireworks, so I hightailed it further down the hill (if you check the link of my walking route, I was actually right near where the Psycho Alsatian lives).

I have to admit, I was a little paranoid about having my camera stolen or something, so I kept an eye out around me, especially on the packs of roaming teenagers... you never know with that lot...

I don't know what it is about fireworks displays, its really nothing but coloured explosions, but there were definitely a couple of points where I was just going "wow"... particularly when the heart shaped fireworks went off... I mean how do you make a heart shaped firework anyway?

But as I messaged Stu while I was walking home...

Skyshow is like bad sex... lots of hype... lots of noise... and its all over in 30 minutes...

And because people come from all over the place to watch it, the roads are packed for HOURS afterwards... of course, because I live so close, I could walk home before other people had even reached their cars... haha... suffer suburbanites!

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