How I Made My Firework Photos Look Different

trxlation
Vantage
Published in
3 min readJul 5, 2016

July 4, 2014, marks the anniversary of when I got my first camera. Since then, I’ve been shooting local fireworks every year. After shooting the same firework show, the same way, for two years in a row, I decided this year was time to do it different.

Let’s face it, almost all photos of fireworks look the same, and it can be pretty hard to put your own twist on them. I almost didn’t shoot photos of fireworks this year because I knew they would look the same as all the other photos I’ve already taken!

If you’ve ever taken photos of fireworks with your phone, I’m sure you were very disappointed to see that they look nothing like most photos of fireworks you see. This is because most of the photos are long exposures. If they weren’t long exposures, all you’d capture would be little dots in the sky, like what your phone does. To capture long exposure photos, I put my camera on a tripod and set my shutter speed to bulb mode. This allows me to have complete control over how long each of my exposures are, by simply holding down the shutter release, and letting go once I’m happy with the time of my exposure. I use the tripod to lock my camera in place, because if it was to move during the exposure, it would mess up the photo. I leave my ISO at 100, and usually set my aperture around F/11. Once all of this is done, I put my camera in manual focus mode, set whatever lens I’m using to infinity focus, and wait for the fireworks to start. Once they start, I open my shutter and leave it open for as long as I want. The longer it’s open, the more fireworks will be in the one picture. I usually leave my shutter open for about 4 fireworks.

Now let’s talk about what I did different this year. I followed all of the steps I just talked about, but this time I left the head on my tripod a little loose. This allows me to freely move my camera around on the tripod, but still be able to keep it still if I so choose. By moving my camera around during an exposure, I’m able to blur all of the fireworks. For most of my photos, I shot them like they had two layers. The first layer being the background, I would move my camera side to side, up and down, and all around. Then, while still holding my shutter open, I would shoot the second layer, which is shooting the fireworks normally while keeping my camera still. This results in creating photos like what you see below.

I’m very happy with the photos that I got this year. I feel like they really stand out from most of the firework photos out there.

If you enjoyed this post, please show your support by recommending it. I would really appreciate it! Also, if you’d like to see more of my work and a few more firework photos, you can go follow me on Instagram, I share a lot of my work over there, and love engaging with you guys!

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