Five Shots from the July 4th, 2013 Taos Fireworks Show

July 5, 2013
New Mexico, USA, North America, Photography

Taking picutres of fireworks is suprisingly easy. I promise a full post on the HOW TO for both fireworks and lightning in the coming weeks but for now a few quick pointers to get started.

Just a few simple steps to get you moving.

1. You have to have a tripod or something stable to put your camera on because you will be holding the shutter open for longer than one second and you don’t want to mess up the shot with movement.

2. Take you camera OFF of auto-focus and focus manually to the infinity setting.

3. Set ISO to 100 or 200 (I go with 100)

4. Set your your camera to around f/8 and a two second exposure.

5. Now take a few test shots and see what you are getting. If you want a longer exposure to capture more fireworks in one image then increse your shutter speed to 10-15 seconds and set the camera to about f/22. Careful with this because the camera can pick up so much light that everything is just white and you wont get the nice colors you see here. If you want to capture a single burst then go with a 1-2 second shutter speed.

6. Zoom in and out and play with it. I really like to zoom in close on the firework burst to capture the patterns made by the falling streams of light. That is just my taste. Also, because Taos’ firework display is not set on a lake where you might get a cool reflection or against a backdrop of city lights there is no advantage to zooming out too far because the fireworks get lost in the dark mountain landscape. Next year I want to be somewhere where there is a lake so that I can capture the reflection of the bursts in the water.

Really, that is it.

I promise a more extensive HOW TO as soon as possible. In the meantime. Enjoy these shots and go play with your camera!