How to Photograph Fireworks

There are numerous occasions throughout the year that we celebrate with fireworks, and regardless of what occasion we’re celebrating, almost everyone with a camera wants to try to capture the display of lights and colors. Unfortunately, almost every photographer fails to do just that. For every great fireworks photograph, there are hundreds of blurry, over exposed, under exposed, shaky, out of focus or just plain ol’ bad photographs of fireworks. It’s actually not that difficult to capture great firework photographs - it just takes a little patience, some practice, and a couple of important tips to remember - oh, and you need a camera.

Photo by Scott111184

Equipment

Before you even head out to the fireworks, you need to make sure you have the necessary equipment. Whether you have a point-and-shoot camera, or an dSLR, you’re going to want to have a tripod (or at least something that will help you steady the camera). You’ll be using longer shutter speeds to capture the movement of the fireworks which, unfortunately, means you’ll also capture any movement of the camera itself as well. If you have a dSLR, you’ll reduce the “shakes” in your fireworks even further by using a remote shutter release (a remote shutter release will allow you to open and close the shutter without having to touch - and accidentally shake - the camera). If you have a dSLR, you also have to decide what type of lens to use, which depends on where you are in relation to the fireworks, and what type of firework photographs you want to capture. Generally I would recommend something in the 35mm - 100mm range so that you have the option to capture the overall scene or zoom in a little to fill the frame with the fireworks.

Photo by GREAPER

Preparing to Shoot

Once you’ve got your camera bag packed and you’re on your way to the fireworks, you’ve got a couple of things you need to keep in mind. When selecting your location from where you’re going to watch and photograph the fireworks, you need to keep two things in mind: the wind, and the background. If there’s no wind, it doesn’t really matter, but even if there’s a little wind, being up-wind means that when the smoke from the fireworks starts to blow, it will blow away from you. If you’re down wind the fireworks, the smoke will blow between you and the fireworks, which will make all of your subsequent photographs hazy and smoky. Once you’ve figured out the wind, you’ll want to decide what you may want in the background (and/or foreground) of your firework photographs - do you want to frame the fireworks with trees or buildings; do you want to have the fireworks isolated in a black sky, or do you want to include the ground/surroundings in the photographs? Decide ahead of time what type of firework photographs you want to take, and then make your location selection based on where you can best take those types of photographs.

Once you’ve selected your location, make sure to take note of what will be in the foreground and the background of all your photographs (and look out for things that may obstruct your clear view of the fireworks like power lines, branches, etc). Set up your tripod and aim it approximately where you think the fireworks will be. Take some test shots (you might want to try to frame the photographs with something in the foreground/background to give your firework photographs some perspective) and make sure you’ve got the horizon straight. It’s very easy, and not at all uncommon, to over look simple things like keeping a straight horizon and avoiding things like power lines. Make sure to arrive at your location with enough time to set up your camera and tripod properly - there’s nothing worse than a silhouette of a power line or a crooked horizon to ruin every single one of your firework photographs.

How to Photograph Fireworks - wahunterinrok

Photo by wahunterinrok

The Technicals

Now that you have your equipment set up in a good location, it’s time to figure out the technicals. If you’ve got a simple point-and-shoot camera, it’s going to be easy - set it to “fireworks” mode. If your point-and-shoot camera doesn’t have a fireworks mode, look for something along the lines of “night time” mode and hope for the best. Your point-and-shoot camera probably won’t capture you fantastic firework photographs, but you may be lucky and get some good shots. If you’ve got a dSLR camera, you can do a little more playing around.

First you’re going to want to hook up your remote shutter release - if you don’t have one (they’re pretty cheap, and well worth the small investment), you can make due, but you may end up with some camera shake in your photographs. Next, lower your ISO (100 or lower usually works best) and set your camera to “bulb mode” (which means that the shutter simply stays open as long as the shutter release button remains depressed). Finally, based on your proximity to the fireworks, select a lens. A lot of people think you need a fast lens to capture fireworks, but because fireworks are so bright, smaller apertures tend to work quite well (you’ll probably find that somewhere between f/8 and f/16 will usually work best - an aperture of f/11 is usually a good compromise as it will allow you to keep the background black while maintaining sharpness). As far as focus goes, it is common to hear to manually set your focus to infinity and hope for the best. Personally, I would recommend setting the focus during the first couple of shots, and then use that focus throughout the rest of the show - they’re all going to be shot up into a similar focus plane, and you don’t want to be changing the focus during the show (or you’ll miss a bunch of the fireworks!).

When it comes time to actually start taking the photographs, there are only a few things you need to do. Using bulb mode, hold the shutter down just before fireworks go off, and release it a couple of seconds afterwards (you can play around with timing to achieve a variety of effects). Be careful, however, to not leave the shutter open too long - fireworks are brighter than one would thing and it’s easy to over expose them if you leave the shutter open too long. After the first couple of shots, take a quick peak at your screen to make sure they’re coming out ok. Rinse and repeat.

Photo by Msnow

Random Tips & Tricks

Decide on landscape or portrait orientation ahead of time and stick with it - it’s better for framing (especially in the dark) and because you’ll be moving around less, you’ll capture more photographs if you pick an orientation and stick with it.
Try to include as much as you can in the frame - since you’re never going to know exactly where each firework is going, it’s better to make sure you can capture all of the display, rather than having part of it cut off in each photograph.
Make sure you are ready to go from the start. If there isn’t a lot wind, you are going to end up with smoke in each photograph. Usually before each show starts, they fire off some test shots - if it’s dark enough, these test shots and the first couple of fireworks in the show will be the sharpest and will have the least amount of smoke.
A common trick is to hold a black piece of card board or foam core in front of the lens between “bursts” and do an extended shot (basically a double exposure for digital cameras). This can create the illusion of multiple fireworks going off at once in one frame.
Avoid auto white balance, as it will adjust from shot to shot. Instead, set your white balance to daylight (or even better, if your camera is fast enough, take the photographs in RAW and play around with the white balance in post processing).
If you can, lock your mirror in the “up” position. While the vibration will be minimal, each time you take a photograph, the mirror snaps up and down. If you lock the mirror, you’ll avoid that additional shake. You won’t be able to frame the next shot, but once you’ve got it framed, you can set it and leave for the rest of the show. Every little vibration will show up in long exposures, so if you can cut them out, your fireworks will turn out that much better.

If you’ve got some tips of your own, share them in the comments section in the Corner forums. If you need some further inspiration, here are some of my favorite firework photographs by members of PhotographyCorner: