How to Photograph Fireworks

People often ask me what my settings were for certain night shots, but the light on the landscape and your subject varies from night to night as the moon phase changes, it varies from hour to hour as the moon moves in the sky, and even from moment to moment as your point your camera in different directions and have more or less light pollution in your shot.  So when I pursue night shots, I focus on determining the best exposure, and I remain vigilant to adjust it as conditions change. Normally you have to monitor f-stop, exposure time and ISO, but for fireworks the situation is simplified a bit.  The burning embers have a certain brightness which you can turn up or down adjusting f-stop or ISO, and the exposure time simply controls how long you want the trails of the moving embers to be.  You can determine the time between each shot fired, you can get many complete explosions of color.

Often an exposure time of around 4 seconds works well, but in this case the shots were being fired every 6 seconds, so I left one camera on an intervalometer capturing 5 second exposures at f/16, ISO 640, then triggering the next shot one second later, so they were 6 seconds apart in total. Upon returning, I assembled the resulting shots into a time-lapse video, as described on my blog:

Create a Timelapse Video on Your Digital Camera http://activesole.blogspot.com/2011/08/photographer-light-dance-pfeiffer-beach.html

For the video sequence it appears that I re-framed the shot a couple of times during the fireworks display.  I've also had been experiencing a bug in Lightroom where a crop from one shot pasted into others does not always take effect correctly, so that may be coming into play as well.

Independence Day fireworks at Crowley Lake in the Eastern Sierra 2013

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Here are some other fireworks displays I've photographed in the past 5 years:

Bridgeport, California 2012
https://www.flickr.com/search?user_id=23183960%40N00&sort=relevance&text=fireworks%20Bridgeport%202012

South Lake Tahoe, Nevada, 2011 
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2011/08/south-lake-tahoe-fireworks-ranked-6-in.html

Tahoe City, California, 2010 
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-4th-weekend.html

Seaside, Oregon, 2009 
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2009/07/by-rockets-red-glare-bombs-bursting-in.html

South Lake Tahoe Fireworks Ranked #6 in America

Fireworks in South Lake Tahoe

I've seen fireworks displays in at least a few dozen locations in America, over cities, theme parks, mountains, the ocean, and lakes. This Summer I saw the best I've seen yet, in South lake Tahoe. Ranked #6 on the top 15 by AOL, (July 4th Fireworks: 15 of the Biggest Shows in America Ranked), it offers some of the most interesting and innovative burst patterns I've seen. The pace is great, choreographed to music playing on a local radio station.  If you live within driving distance, it's definitely a show to put on your bucket list.

Impeccably choreographed fireworks display.

Fireworks Photography on the July 4th Weekend, 2010

Fireworks Over Lake Tahoe, originally uploaded by Jeff Sullivan.

Even landscape photographers take a day or two off from time to time, but that doesn't mean that we can't still take our cameras along! On Saturday I enjoyed fireworks and a BBQ at a friend's house overlooking Napa Valley, then headed up to Lake Tahoe the next night to enjoy fireworks there as well. Before the fireworks began, I spent some time exploring the prolific lupine growing along the shoreline.  Tahoe is a great place to catch fireworks, since there are many displays around the lake, and some towns avoid the competition from other displays by scheduling theirs for July 3, so you can actually pursue fireworks 2 nights in a row!

There used to be a great display at Squaw Valley resort, but in recent years that has been suspended due to increased fire danger in the recent drought years.

By The Rockets Red Glare, The Bombs Bursting In Air

By The Rockets Red Glare, The Bombs Bursting In Air, originally uploaded by Jeff Sullivan (Oregon Coast today).

Given that our itinerary ended up getting reversed due to clouds on the Oregon Coast towards the beginning of the trip, that put us heading towards the coast around Independence Day.

We learned of Depoe Bay's July 3 disply as we sat in a coffee shop in Hood River, so we hopped in the car and made the trek.

That display over the rocky coast was great, but the following night at Seaside was a much bigger spectacle.




In addition to the official display at Seaside, people had brought a significant quantity of their own fireworks to shoot off on the spacious beach. We had purchased a pack of fountains in Montana knowing that Oregon didn't allow rockets and mortars, but we found that many people had purchased the disallowed varieties across the border in Washington.

One of our favorite things to do was to take long exposure shots while we "painted" with the 3' long sparklers we had brought. Fortuantely they lasted several minutes, so we could take several shots with each one!
We stayed on the beach until about 11:30pm, which was good since the traffic getting out of town was a challenge until well past midnight.