I don’t know about you but watching fireworks if one my favorite activities. Put me in the middle of a field with hundreds or thousands of people, some patriotic music and a good fireworks show is the best way to celebrate the 4th of July!
When my youngest son, who now over 30 was just an infant we went to fireworks that were sponsered by the Herr’s company. We piled the boys in car along with a picnic dinner, some fishing rods, a blanket and some headphones for the youngest because I pretty sure he was on about about 4 months old and headed off to spend the afternoon at the county park. The older boys fished in the pond and listened to the first band who were there for the children and then the country band who was there for the adults. We had dinner on the blanket and the boys ran around with their glow sticks. The fireworks were AMAZING and that’s a understatement! This night started my love of watching watching these loud, ear piercing, kalidescope-like works of art! I rarely missed one of those events and I still enjoy going. Luckily my local township provides us with a wonderful show each year and rather than an hour long drive, I can walk there!
Over the years, I’ve tried to improve my skills at photographing fireworks. Once you get the hang of it though, it’s really easy! Let me give you a few tips. Put your camera on a tripod! The best fireworks are created using long exposures. You can’t hold a camera or even your cell phone still for 5-10-20 seconds. Use manual exposure. Set your ISO to 100. You can play around with your aperture but anything over f/8 should give you fairly in focus images. Anything less than that can create some really cool fireworks effects! I would recommend waiting until the first set and trying to focus while those first few booms happen! Once you set your focus, you can turn your AF off and leave your focus ring alone! Make sure you don’t touch it! If you have a remote cable release or another type of release you can just use that. Experiment with how long you want your shutter speed to be. Using a long shutter speed allows more time for more fireworks to explode in your frame but if too many go off it can become an overexposed jumble of light! Start at 10 seconds and adjust from there!
If you want to get creative, open up your aperture! The lines of light become wider and softer or you can create an image with lots of out of focus bokeh! Try rotating your focus rings to get creative effects. Take your camera off your tripod and move it around, in various ways, to create an abstract image. Not every image will work but you might find a couple of keepers in the bunch.
My final piece of advice is to put the camera away or at least the cable release done and just sit and watch for a few minutes. Be in the moment and remember why you are there, especially if you’re shooting on the 4th of July!
Lensbaby Edge 80
Lensbaby Edge 80
Lensbaby Edge 80
Lensbaby Velvet 28
Lensbaby Edge 80
Happy 4th of July to my American friends! I hope the next time you pick up your camera to shoot fireworks you find something you’ve read about here helpful!