Opinion : How, and where, to best view fireworks

IPA members always have the best view of fireworks.

Many Iowa and Wisconsin fireworks lovers made rockets for the fall IPA meeting.

This 12-inch shell was made by an IPA member for the meeting at the Bar-Y.

Scott Anderson uses a hydraulic press to make a rocket.

Girandola: This fireworks display floats and spins.

Hey you!

Yes, you, the dude – or dude-ette, for those of you women who prefer not to be called “dude” – pay attention.

Yes, you, who thinks it’s kind of cool to sit on your front porch every year to watch the fireworks of Boomtown, this column is for you.

You’re missing it.

Fireworks are not meant to be a front porch kind of thing. Fireworks are something best viewed while looking nearly straight up.

A couple of Saturday nights each summer – Party in the Park and Boomtown – thousands of people gather in Vinton to watch our area fireworks experts put on one of the biggest small-town fireworks show in the country.

On a few other weekends throughout the year, those people gather at the Bar-Y farm northeast of Vinton for the same reason: Fireworks. I’ve been lucky enough to attend some of these meetings, and to learn what the members of the Iowa Pyrotechnic Association are doing to make fireworks more fun for more people.

The last big IPA event of the year was the gathering at Chuck Yedlik’s property this past weekend. Scores of people from all over Iowa – along with several member of the Wisconsin fireworks organization – spent the weekend sharing what they know about fireworks, learning how to make new things, learning new ways to make the shells they have been making for years, and of course, at last, to blow them up.

Most of what you saw or heard on Saturday evening was made by members of the IPA, although there was a display of imported fireworks – items not used during this summer’s events.

IPA members, including Yedlik, made shells, some of them as big as basketballs, by hand. Those shells can take scores of hours to make over the course of several weeks. And in fireworks competitions, the success of a shell is not determined by how big or how loud or how colorful it is, but by whether or not it does what its maker created it to do.

Yedlik made a large shell with chemicals designed to create a green burst in the sky – and green it was. Fellow IPA member Scott Anderson made an orange one. They also made few other fireworks, and several other IPA members also came with shells ready to display. Members of the Wisconsin Pyrotechnic Arts Guild – winners of 10 straight Pyrotechnic Guild International (PGI) club championships – brought many of their unique rockets.

IPA members also learned how a hydraulic press (although costly) can make rocket-making much faster and convenient. Some members built spinning fireworks called girandolas, using the bottom of plastic ice cream pails. Members shared what they have tried with each other before heading to the pasture to light their shells.

The job of the IPA members and their guests is to make the biggest, loudest, most colorful fireworks possible.

My job is to capture the fireworks with my camera.

They do a much better job than I do.

I had my eyes on my view-finder, as I aimed my camera above to take a photo of one of those large, colorful shells. I thought my photo was pretty good until I put down the camera.

What I saw with my own eyes was a million times better than what I saw through my camera lens. Yes, it’s possible to take some good fireworks photos. No, it’s thoroughly impossible to take photos that capture the way fireworks look, sound and feel as they explode high above you and surround you as they float toward the ground.

So take a look at the photos that accompany this column. And next time fireworks come to your area, be there. And by “there,” I do not mean on your front porch or some distant place where you can only see the lights on the horizon. Get as close to the fireworks as possible. When you do, you will understand what I am talking about much more clearly than I can explain with words or photos.