Photographer Abe Blair captured the 3rd of July fireworks in Kings Beach in 2015 from the ridge above Stateline Point. Fireworks shows, including the Kings Beach show on July 3, along with celebrations on July 4 in Tahoe City, Incline Village, Donner Lake and South Lake Tahoe are a great way to celebrate. See the feature in this issue for 4th of July celebrations. | AbeBlair.com
Celebrating Independence Day
There’s no better place in the world to celebrate our Independence than in Tahoe. Beach party bashes, parades and fun runs, kids’ activities and good ole’ fashioned 4th of July games, topped off by fireworks shows that stretch over two days from Kings Beach on July 3rd to Tahoe City, Incline Village, South Lake Tahoe and Truckee on the 4th.
Jenn Sheridan has all of the details on the local celebrations inside this issue, while Priya Hutner shares her tips on beating the 4th of July rush at the grocery store. And, Lou Phillips shares his picks for great wines to complement your 4th of July barbecue.
Every 4th of July, photographers send us images from local fireworks shows that capture the spirit of the Independence Day celebrations in Tahoe. We look through the images picking our favorites not only for the fireworks, but for the reaction it elicits in us, the emotional connection to an image like Chris Talbot’s shadow of a figure watching the fireworks from a pier in 2014, to jaw-dropping images that we can’t pass by like Elizabeth Carmel’s image of Donner Lake fireworks set against the snow-covered mountains in 2012 (see both covers at TheTahoeWeekly.com).
This year, we were drawn to Abe Blair’s image of the fireworks in Kings Beach. The bright colors of the fireworks dance across the night sky and on the surface of Lake Tahoe illuminating the beach and the boats. There was another of Abe’s images that grabbed us, too – “Encore,” his photo of four fireworks shows over Lake Tahoe taken over two days. Art director Alyssa Ganong tried different crops to make the panoramic image work for a cover. We even played with the idea of setting the image on the horizontal of the magazine cover, but decided against that.
In the end, I couldn’t let it go and I woke up one morning thinking about the image and that we had to run it so that our readers could see this beautiful work of art. Of course, Abe was on vacation and we were close to our press deadline, but we all agreed that we wanted to run the image and we made it work. It’s a truly spectacular image that we set across two pages inside this issue. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
