Saturday evening saw the third and final of the three fireworks displays that make up the Celebration of Light festival in Vancouver, this one by Team Japan. Continuing on my panoramic theme, for this final display I decided to give Burnaby Mountain a try, approximately 15 kilometres east of downtown.

I had thought that, with this being a relatively distant viewpoint, and with the fireworks being launched on the far side of downtown, that there wouldn’t be many people at this viewpoint, but I couldn’t have been more wrong — it was packed! Fortunately I was still able to grab the best spot for photography, giving a clear view without obstructions from the surrounding trees.

The weather on Saturday night was a lot less cooperative than it had been for the previous two days, having turned considerably more humid. This did give a beautiful red glow on the horizon from the sunset, but also meant that the air was very disturbed between me and downtown Vancouver, with the lights visibly twinkling and making for challenging shooting conditions at this distance, made worse as the smoke from the fireworks started to build up. However, I wasn’t going to let that stop me, and once again set up to take the panorama using my 70–300mm lens at 300mm with a 1.4x teleconverter.

On the far left is BC Place, lit up in the colours of the rainbow for Vancouver Pride this weekend, with the downtown buildings centrally, and Coal Harbour towards the right. The tallest building in Vancouver, the Shangri-La, is silhouetted by the fireworks in this photo. The big glow of orange lights, emphasised by the humid air reflecting it, is the Vancouver Docks, and the bright road is Hastings Road. In the background, the mountains of Vancouver Island can be seen silhouetted against the last bit of post-sunset glow in the sky.