The time of fireworks is approaching and it’s one of my favorite times of year. There is almost nothing more interesting to photograph on or around the Fourth of July. The only problem is how do we approach it. Well rather then reinvent the wheel check out a previous post on how to do just that (click here)!

I wanted to provide a few more tips via photographs. I recently went to a summer celebration at mid-land beach on Staten Island to give it a try. I like that with fireworks although some destinations may feel the same they can all be approached differently. Rather then just go to the shore I stayed back and incorporated people into my scene. The fireworks being bright enough created a silhouette of them that just turned out to be fantastic. Better then your typical and simple bursts in the sky. Now this isn’t they only way to go about this. Just one approach.

When you get there and your all setup now you wonder where to point the lens and if it’s a zoom how much of the sky you may want. Now with a zoom you can adjust on the fly more quickly, but that still doesn’t help with composition. The bad news is it isn’t a win win situation. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You start by choosing a composition and then a few fireworks later the bursts are now higher in the sky. What I would do is find an average. You will never get it all and shooting real wide with cropping later will just degrade the picture. Having space in the image above though can leave room for text

Wondering how long to hold that shutter open is the real difficult part. I will tell you there is no rule of thumb. Typically just not too long. A few bursts will do. That gets thrown to the wolves sometimes as some fireworks are super bright and others are quite dim in comparison. Experimentation is key and keep on shooting. Vary your exposures. One thing I will tell you is finales are super bright and fast. Long exposures there will probably kill your shot.

This is the same shot held longer.

And even longer then that. See if you hold out too long you will burn out your highlights and ruin your image.

Some blown highlights may work. Here there are some blown highlights, but we accept the fact they are huge bursts of light and there are many other colorful bursts to compliment them. Variation is key. I highly encourage you to go out with your equipment and experiment. These shows are your taxes at work. So go out have a great time with the family and come back with some awesome pictures!