As you will understand I did not take pictures of all the 11.000 firework pieces, although I did shoot some 400 pictures. I deleted a lot because the were not interresting or good enough, and made a special selection to show you here.

Hanabi, the japanese word for fireworks comes from two words: hana (flower) and hi (fire). In the concatenation the first character of the second word often gets a " in japanese, so hi changes to bi. In the same way ikebana (flower arrangements) comes form ike (live) and hana (flower).

In Japan the fireworks are not meant to scare away bad spirits, but to welcome the good ones. The tradition sais that around these summer days ghosts of your late ancestors/friends may return and come to talk with you. However, in our group, nobody had such an experience yet. Anyway, it is a nice excuse to shoot some great fireworks into the skies.


So this is why it is called "flowerfire"


Very much like a dandelion (paardebloem (NL)/ tanpopo(JP)). The "stem" of the flower is actually the next arrow being shot into the sky, the "flower" are the last bits of a huge bang. I just opened the camera lens when it was almost gone.


This guiding star would be nice as a christmas card maybe, although in japan this is no use ofcourse...


Palmtree





UFO


Personal favorite


Galaxy view











Niagara Falls








Grande Finale