With the 4th of July approaching, today we are looking at capturing images of fireworks displays, and a method I enjoy practicing when I photograph them. There are a few different approaches to the work involving differing camera settings and adjustments to one’s aperture and shutter speed. The method in this week’s article moves a step further and involves manually exposing your frames to add a bit more to your final images in the way of having multiple launches and explosions captured.
This technique has a few main requirements in terms of necessary gear. A camera with manually adjustable settings, a tripod, a shutter release cable so as not to bump the camera (use of an ”on board” timer works as well, but can be tricky to time for bursts) and a dark and relatively thick cloth or towel.
When initially getting involved in capturing your images, you need to decide upon 2 of the three basic settings, aperture and ISO (we’ll get to shutter speed later, as that is the crux of this tip). In the past, I would start by determining my desired ISO, as not being a big fan of noise, I would adjust to a generally lower setting from which to base my aperture. Advances in technology both with sensors and de-noising in post-production (editing) now leave me far more comfortable with bumping up the ISO to allow for more stopping down and longer exposures.
In the case of the images accompanying this article (captured in 2017 at the Blackhawk, Colorado Boom Town Independence Day Fireworks), I decided on setting my ISO at 800 (pretty low even for the standards of the time, as I was still very early in my own learning process) and a range of f/7.1 to f/10 for my aperture. As with all photography, stopping down (raising the aperture number) lowers the available light coming to the sensor and helps to accentuate the “streamers” of embers from a blast with the required longer shutter speed. A lower aperture setting will do better at “freezing” the moment, and in the case of fireworks, will still show the streamers but with a bit less of the “effect”.
The third setting of shutter speed still takes a bit of dialing in, but the main requirement is the longer the better. On this evening, I had the camera set at an average of 6 seconds, but you can certainly play around with longer settings. This can take a bit of dialing in to your own tastes, but the more bursts added to a single frame can lead towards an image that is too “busy”.
Once you’ve got your gear set up and settings adjusted, you’re ready to roll! When a launch occurs, there is often a delay before the explosion, so I like to click the shutter at the initial launch to capture the smoke “tail” of the rocket, then use the towel to cover the lens until the burst (while the shutter remains open). Once the explosion occurs, remove the towel or cloth, once again exposing the sensor to capture the blast. As launches often contain multiple rockets in quick succession, you can use the towel to expose or cover the lens, controlling which bursts and launches you want in a single frame. Always keep in mind your shutter speed and try to count down the setting in your head as you expose the sensor, as the loud explosions will prevent you from hearing the shutter close. Most modern cameras will display the image on a screen after exposure, so that is helpful as well.
This technique can take a little practice to dial in and will always require a little tweaking with different displays. While displays can be few and far between (unless you live near a fireworks “paradise” such as the Orlando, Florida area hosting nightly displays at Disney World, Epcot Center, Sea World and more), this can be a tough one to dial in due to infrequency of one’s ability to practice. That said, once you get the basics down, you’re on the road to creating a much more dynamic and creative image including multiple launches in a single frame!
(It bears noting that the final image seen here takes the creativity a step further in editing, and is a composite of two manually exposed burst frames, and a third frame fully exposed after the final explosions to better capture the surroundings as well as the starry skies)