Photographing Fireworks

So with the 4th come fireworks and this year I wanted to try to capture them on film.  Well on digital memory anyways.  Images, I wanted to have images.  So I went with my Sister and Brother-in-Law to "The Love Boat", a large rock known for its bouldering possibilities that's a little over 1000' above my house from which we could see down into Folsom Field where the cities fireworks show was.

The Technical Means:
Because I was far away I set my ISO at 400, as opposed to 200 which I would've used if I was closer.  I set my aperture to f/10, again I probably would've used a little smaller aperture (maybe f/16) if I was closer.  I had to use my telephoto and set it to full zoom (250mm for me) I was so far away, but that ended up being a decently framed shot.  I then used my remote (the camera was set on full manual, bulb exposure) and just continually set it off.  I'd then watch the fireworks and after what I felt was a good image had appeared, close the shutter and start over.  It took a lot of practice to figure out what a good time to close the shutter was but I did get better as time went on.  Anywhere from 4 to 16 seconds for the exposure just depending on the fireworks.  At the end, during the grand finale I set it on continuous burst for a 3" or so exposure and just let it go.  The first way was better but didn't really work for the grand finale so the second method was pretty good there.  In total I shot about 150 exposures, I'd say about 10-15 turned out pretty well.  I ended up uploading three of them: and then deleting them.  So I uploaded these four directly to this blog (the three I uploaded were not selected to Google Earth and even though I can have 2GB of photos that aren't selected I've become OCD about not having anything up that isn't).  So here are those four (click for full size):

As per usual all my photos can be seen here: http://www.panoramio.com/user/5423509