This year for the 4th of July, Gina and I decided to actually go out and shoot some fireworks. This may not sound like a big deal to anyone, but it is quite the feat for the two of us. Most years we don't even bother to go see any fireworks and when we do we haven't felt the need to photograph them. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps it is mostly due to the fact we tend to wake up super early in the morning and by 10:00pm we are usually sleeping. However, this year we planned on making the effort by making sure we took a nice long nap during the middle of the day. I'm glad we did since I was pretty satisfied with some of the results.

Now there are plenty of articles out there talking about technical aspects of shooting fireworks, so I don't need to bore people by posting anything too specific. I used basically the same principles I would have if I was just taking night pictures of the city...except timing it specifically to the fireworks themselves.

Was there things I would do differently? Sure. Would I try a different spot next time? Possibly. One thing I did learn was to avoid having little children run into your tripod while you are shooting. Otherwise you might end up with a shot like this:

And I am certain that would have been the award-winning shot of the night!

Oh well.

Thanks for reading!

John