Freedom Fest 2008

I went to Jonesboro this year for the Fourth of July. It was nice, since I was stuck at work last year and was not able to see the Little Rock firework show, even from the windows. Of Jonesboro's two shows, Freedom Fest and Fourth in the Forest, we ended up going to Freedom Fest. Along with seeing Fourth in the Forest the last time I was in Jonesboro, we were hoping Freedom Fest would give us a better route to exit the show.

We got to the Northeast Arkansas District Fairgrounds about two hours early and pretty much listened to everyone else's music and watched their fireworks go off while we waited for the 9:30 showing. The fireworks were set to music that was synced between the three stations at 9:30. It started with the National Anthem, and the show continued with almost 30 minutes of music.

Freedom Fest was put on by the Triple FM Radio Group, which includes 104.9 The Fox, 100.5 The Eagle, and Mix 106.7. The radio group's goal was to put together the biggest free fireworks display in Jonesboro history. I never heard any stats on having the most fireworks, having spent the most money on them, or having the longest-running display in town, so I can't say if it was, indeed, the largest in Jonesboro history. The show was pretty good though.

For the curious, here's how I shot it: I set up my Nikon D200 with Sigma 28-70mm lens. To have less digital noise ("film grain"), I dropped down to ISO 800, which let me make exposures of one to five seconds to capture plenty of motion as the fireworks streaked through the sky. I started at five seconds, but the quick successive bursts proved too much, making a large cluster of white "hair," so I tried to drop the shutter speed as the shots picked up.