Taking pictures of fireworks. Some suggestions.

[Cityscapes]

Here are some suggestions that I follow when taking pictures of fireworks. Hope they will be useful.


First of all select a good spot. Picture of just a firework in the sky won't look artistic. You need something else to accompany it: castle, bridge, cathedral, some famous landmark or just nice houses on the riverside.


Come prepared. Tripod and remote control (or shutter release) are a must.



The first couple of shots should be test ones. Just to understand the time between firework shots and what time do you need to have the picture right (not over and not underexposed).


Then the process is easy. As soon as the firework comes out click on the remote control and wait the time calculated on the previous step. Looking at the result you can then slightly adjust the time.


The picture will look best if you start taking it when firework is going up and opening and stop it before it will be going down.


And here are some photos from Moscow that I took using this technique.

 

[Garbz]

First of all select a good spot. Picture of just a firework in the sky won't look artistic. You need something else to accompany it: castle, bridge, cathedral, some famous landmark or just nice houses on the riverside.

And that's all you needed to say.

With this one line you could instantly improve thousands of crap and boring photographs of fireworks that litter the internet.

This thread needs to be bumped on the 3rd of July just to save everyone from the battle of the clone boring firework pictures.

Compositionally your photo is quite similar to one I took a while ago, down to the bridge and the position of the city in the frame http://farm1.static.flickr.com/229/486068637_ea4fad1f74_b.jpg

 

[EIngerson]

I like the last one Cityscapes. Nice work. If I had to say something, I'd say frame to the right a little more to capture that building.

 

[Cityscapes]

I like the last one Cityscapes. Nice work. If I had to say something, I'd say frame to the right a little more to capture that building.

Thanks you EIngerson. That building has a huge Mercedes sign on it so I had to crop it.

And that's all you needed to say.

Agree