4th of July 2012: Fireworks

This was my first time taking photos of fireworks. It was a lot of fun! And it was my boys' first time to see them in person! (The past couple of years we had been traveling and missed a fireworks show for one reason or another). But this year, they got to see them and they were both in awe.

We are fortunate enough to get to watch fireworks on the 4th of July from my parents front yard. We put fold-out chairs in the middle of the street and wait for the show to begin. There are no crowds, no parking hassles, and the show is great. It's put on by the country club across the street so we are actually really close to the fireworks.

My dad and I both took photos during the show and were stationed with our tripods standing behind everyone else seated in the chairs. One thing that made it really enjoyable for me was my remote shutter release. I had all my settings ready to go on my camera and because of the remote shutter release, I was able to just snap away (without looking through the camera) as I was watching the show. I checked the first few photos and made a few adjustments (including the position of my camera for composition) and then I pretty much just watched the show. 

And actually, remote shutter releases will reduce your camera shake as opposed to pressing the shutter yourself (because your shutter speed should be quite slow for fireworks). My settings were around ISO 200, f-stop 8, and shutter speed about 1 second. In hind sight, I wish I had slowed my shutter just a little more, but there's always next year for experimenting with that. I still loved how these turned out.

In the bottom third of the photo below, you can sort of see the faint outline of a house and trees. That shows you just how close we were to the show. Most of the fireworks were above the house/tree line so the sky just looks black.

When we got to the finale, I didn't have time to change my settings so the fireworks were a little overexposed straight out of the camera. I worked with it a little in ACR, but I will try to be more ready for that next year. Although, the finale comes without warning and I don't want to miss seeing it just to fiddle with my camera settings!

I have yet to see my dad's photos from that evening, but I know he got a couple of shots of everyone watching the fireworks (by bouncing his flash off of them), which I did not get. I may share some of those when I get to see them. This was such a spectacular way to end the evening.