In 2012, Andrew and I proved that you don’t need a big budget to have a romantic Valentine’s day. We had a lovely evening watching fireworks for $6.50 each! (The $6 each was for parking; the 50cents was for a McDonalds ice cream).

Darling Harbour Sydney pre-fireworks

This was Sydney’s Darling Harbour before the fireworks. We’ve attempted before to go watch the Saturday night fireworks, without success. This time we researched parking stations in advance.

The only downside was that I’ve misplaced by release plate for my tripod. I was therefore relegated to shooting using a ‘gorillapod‘ sitting on the ground. While it’s a fantastic little light weight device pointing the camera toward the sky is difficult and making it vertical near impossible. With the tilt it wasn’t that steady so most of my exposures were around 1/6 sec. Andrew on the other hand has brilliant shooting lines from 2 and 3 second exposures.

Darling Harbour post fireworks

After a third and final search of everywhere I could think of, I’ve ordered a new release plate for the tripod. Mr cynic says, ‘congratulations, you now own 2 because sure as eggs you’ll find the other one now.’