Taking the Next Step for Great Fireworks Photos

I was recently giving some advice to someone new at photographing fireworks. After he got the basics of a steady tripod and focusing in the dark figured out, he asked what he could do next.


I have taken photographs of fireworks since I was a kid, but I would not claim to have gotten photos I really loved all that time. Over the last decade I have thought a bit more about this and what it would take to get photos that might say "wow" to me.

While it is nice to get a bunch of fireworks in the frame it is often kind of boring.

Try to find an interesting foreground/background to go along with the show. It especially works well when the bursts light up or accentuate your subject.

Do not be afraid to get a bit more light onto the sensor. You do risk blowing out the colours, but if you can avoid that the results can be really nice.

Crop a bit tighter. You can do some of this in post, but you will reduce the pixel power of your camera when you do this. It is tricky, but try to guestimate the height of the bursts. I typically have a zoom lens on the camera and I play with my tripod positioning throughout the show.

Finally, a nice composite can often create the shot you wanted, but could never actually get. My tripod was in the same position for each of the shots, but I could have never exposed the couple correctly at the right moment and got the right number and type of bursts in the frame at the same time (though I did try). The final result combined several images in Photoshop using layer masks.