How to photograph fireworks by Photocritic

How to photograph fireworks

Oh my, it’s nearly That Time Of Year again, so perhaps it’s a good idea to brush up on the ‘ole fireworks skills, yes? Indeed…

So have a lovely celebration folks, if you’re of the drinking kind, then try to stay vaguely upright until midnight, at least, and give 2007 a becoming welcome!

Rock on…

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Many a budding shutterbug has attempted unsuccessfully to photograph fireworks by merely pointing their film camera to the sky and shooting, resulting dark useless prints. With the advent of digital photography, photographing fireworks has become easy, just by following some basic steps…

Find a location away from the crowd and power lines. An elevated location on a hillside might be adequate. You might even want to scout out your perch beforehand.

Set your camera to use standard quality pics. Having too high quality settings will result in too long of write speed, thereby making you miss shots.

Set the shutter speed to 1 second or longer. Don’t be afraid of underexposing your photos, though. You won’t.

Use a tripod. If you can’t find a tripod use a nice steady base.

Turn off the flash. This might seem like common sense. Remember you are photographing lights, so you don’t need to add more light yourself.

Point your camera toward the sky and shoot. A key to getting a good shot is anticipating when the firework will explode. Initially you will have many hit and miss shots. As the show goes along, you will be able to perfect your timing thereby getting excellent shots.

Can’t get enough? Well, try the guides, tutorials and tips from Better Photo.com, Garry Black, about.com, calphoto, DPchallenge, and Smithsonian institute!

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This entry is © Haje Jan Kamps / Photocritic.org, and was posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.