What a view!

I have mentioned before that our house is located in the central fireworks district of our county.  On the Fourth of July, this means we have a 360° view of fireworks for at least an hour after sunset (plus the random canon shot) without leaving home!  Always keen to hone my photography skills, I aimed my camera at a neighbor’s house where about 50 people had gathered for a fireworks show.  I am not sure how he funds his display, but this neighbor puts on an explosive show.  While filming the fireworks, I occasionally peeked at the camera’s display and decided from those previews that I just wasn’t getting anything worth saving.  Now this might have been because it was past my bedtime when the show started and I was very sleepy or because the mosquitoes had sucked all the blood from my brain or because I am too old to really see the camera display, but my belief that I had wasted my time caused me to lay my camera aside and not even look at the photos for a few weeks.  That is why you are just now seeing them!  It turns out they weren’t too bad for an amateur.  Unfortunately I don’t have any monuments in my neighborhood to use as a backdrop and I didn’t think anyone would believe it if I just stuck the Eiffel Tower in there 🙂

There are many ways to take fireworks pictures – just search the web and you will see what I mean.  Here is my method:

1. Use a tripod
2. Turn off all autofocus (camera and lens) and focused on infinity
3. I used F14 and ISO 200 with remote shutter – but you have to experiment with these settings based on your conditions.
4. When a set of fireworks started, I opened the shutter and kept it open, then just put a piece of black cardboard in front of the lens between bursts of fireworks (don’t touch the camera with the cardboard).  After 3 of 4 fireworks bursts, I released the shutter.
5. I shot these in raw format so I could layer them if I did not get enough burst in a shot.

Here are links to other ideas for taking fireworks pictures:

Shoot Fireworks

Nikon – The Fireworks Show

I just kept

shooting

pictures

until my neighbor

ran out of

money!

• About the Author

About Sunny Weathers

Pilot, motorcyclist and full time RVer. Follow me as I travel all over the US in my Country Coach RV volunteering, making new friends and pursuing a constant outdoor temperature between 70F and 80F. I'll share the fun and the tribulations and any great survival tricks I learn!