On July 4th, 2004, Jess, myself and a couple of our friends went to her office at 101 Park Ave. to watch the fireworks over the East River. I, of course, took pictures (149 of them). Here are the decent ones. Unfortunately, by the time the finale started, the smoke was sufficient to make the fireworks merely a succession of indistinct flashes. An advantage of living in Brooklyn/Queens, I guess.

If you're interested in technical details, I shot these with an Olympus E-10, mounted on my Velbon PH-243 compact tripod. I pressed the shutter button on the camera, so the shots aren't really steady. Focus was fixed at infinity, and I took the shots at f/2 with a shutter speed of 1/2 second at an ISO equivalent of 80. I cropped them and slightly adjusted the contrast in Photoshop.