I'd love to hear what ideas you guys have for something pretty odd and specific that I'd like to try.

I'll give you the background: Last July 4th, we walked to the closest community fireworks show around us to see the display. It was insanely hot, we had to walk about two miles (in 95 degree heat with around 90% humidity), and the sightlines were terrible. The crowds basically had to stand under the tree-line to get far enough away from the launch site.

We live in a condo complex with an above-ground 6-story garage. Looking at Google Maps, it appears there's a direct line of sight from the top story of that garage to the same fireworks display, but it's at a different angle than the viewers at the park get.

Question #1: I've never thought about it before, but am I correct in assuming fireworks are mostly three dimensional? I assume some are not (like the ones that make shapes), but can most of them be seen from any angle and look the same? I won't be surprised if I'm completely wrong about this...

This year, my wife and I have already been invited to a 4th of July party, and I don't think I'd be able to convince her next year to hang out on the parking garage on the chance that we might have a good view of the fireworks.

So that leads me to a little project I was thinking of trying. I'd like to try to capture images of what the display looks like from that angle.

This lead me to thinking about the hardware I'd need for such a project. The easiest thing I can think of would be to get an old canon point and shoot and put that alternative firmware on it. I believe that would give it the ability to do timelapse, but I don't know how the battery would work for such a thing.

I see two challenges to this idea. The first is that I want it to be discrete. I don't want someone taking the capture device or moving it.
The second is, as I mentioned, battery life. We'll probably be gone for the entire afternoon, so it would have to last for up to a maximum of around 8 hours.

I'd love to hear what you guys can think up for such a thing.


ps- of course, in the end, I'll probably scrap all my plans, and leave a note under a rock asking any other possible people with the same idea to take a photo and email it to me