Photographing Fireworks
Photographing fireworks presents some technical challenges, it needs quite a different approach to most other subjects but follow these few steps carefully and you will be successful. What are we photographing? Basically we are photographing streaks of light that develop over a period of time against a black background. The great thing about a black background is that it makes no impression on the film, or sensor in the case of a digital camera. So we can leave the shutter open as long as we like, the black will still be black.
So, in short, the way to photography fireworks is to set the camera to manual exposure, set the aperture to a suitable
f-stop and the shutter to b or bulb. Open the shutter just before the firework bursts and close it after it’s finished. Easy!
Tripod
The first thing we need is a sturdy tripod. The alternative methods of support that I mentioned in the photographing buildings tutorial won’t cut it here. Here we are talking about seriously long shutter times of several seconds so nothing but a good sturdy tripod will do. The second piece of kit that would be very useful is a remote shutter release so you don’t have to touch the camera at all. In the old days this was a cheap piece of kit called a cable release but nowadays it is more likely to be an electronic gizmo with a higher price tag. I, personally, don’t use one but that’s because I’m a cheapskate.
Focus
I’m afraid all the modes and settings that you paid all that money for are all useless when photographing fireworks and auto focus is one of them. If you leave your camera set to auto focus the lens will whirr backwards and forwards in a demented fashion trying to find something to focus on in the black sky.
Set the focus to manual and then focus on something in the far distance. Don’t just wind the focus ring around to the end of its run, check it against a distant object if you can.
Aperture & Shutter Speed – The Technical Stuff
The exposure is going to be determined by the intensity of light from the firework which, as it bursts will spread across the sky. So we can only be guided by people who have been successful in the past as there is not way to measure the light at the time. There is TTL metering which can measure the light during an exposure, as it does with a flash exposure but, in the case of fireworks, there is far too much contrast to give a useful reading.
The aperture you set depends on the ISO rating (basically the sensitivity to light) for the film or the ISO rating set on your digital camera. At ISO 100 you will need to set the aperture to between f8 and f16. So a good start would be f11 at 100 ISO but be prepared to vary this a little for very bright fireworks.
For an explanation of ISO film speed rating see my tutorial – ISO rating for Film Speed
As I mentioned above, the shutter speed needs to be set to b or bulb (bulb refers to the old fashioned type of remote shutter release, on which you literally squeezed and rubber bulb and triggered the shutter with a burst of compressed air). At this setting there is no set time for the exposure, when you press the button the shutter opens and when you release it the shutter closes. So the shutter may be open for several seconds. There is no significant build up of light on the film or sensor as the sky is black and the firework is only lit for a short time at any one spot before it spreads out.
For more details about shutter speeds and apertures have a look at my shutter speeds and apertures tutorial.
Framing
Framing a picture you can’t yet see is always going to be a challenge. What are you going to aim for? I think there are basically three shots to consider, there is a wide shot that includes a bit of foreground – a building or monument, especially if they are floodlit, or just silhouettes of the crowd. This can be really great when it all comes together but there are quite a few problems. Will the fireworks go off in the right place in the frame? Will everything be properly exposed? Will any movement on the ground be too blurred?
Another way to work is to shoot all the elements separately then combine them in Photoshop. Shoot the whole scene without any fireworks then shoot the fireworks separately and drop them into your main picture in exactly the position you want them. Because the sky is black this is really easy to do (I’ll explain later).
If you’re planning to do this it’s important to make sure you get the whole firework in the frame like this one on the left.
Thirdly you can go for maximum impact with a tight shot where the firework fills the whole frame and spills out the edges. This can be a bit hit and miss, literally, as you may end up pointing your camera in the wrong place entirely.
Lastly a very interesting option is to leave the shutter open while several fireworks explode building up patterns in your picture.
The safest way though, if you are a Photoshop fan is to build your picture from elements photographed one at a time.
Layers
The image above is made up of six different pictures. It would hardly qualify as the most realistic picture of the year but it is quite colourful and exciting, and it portrays a good impression of a firework display. The background of the picture is the photo of the buildings (I had to extend the sky a little using the ‘canvas size’ tool to make a bit more room for the fireworks.
The fireworks were then added one by one by simply dragging the photo into the widow of the background picture. This creates a new layer on top of the existing layer. At this stage you can’t see the background layer at all. However if you change the layer mode from ‘normal’ to ‘lighten’ the background reappears.
Below you can see the layers palette for this picture layer 3 is selected which contains the blue firework and you can see at the top of the palette the layer blending mode is set to ‘lighten’. This means that only the parts of the image that are lighter that the layer(s) below will show. For the purpose of our subject this is ideal as the background of each image disappears.
If, as in the case of three of our layers, further control is needed, we can apply a layer mask. These are represented by the white rectangles that you can see on layers 1, 2 and 3. The black blobs represent parts of the image that have been blocked by painting black onto the layer mask. The great thing about layer masks is that by using soft edge brushes and or different opacities you have a very fine degree of control over what shows and what is masked. Also, by using white instead of black you can reverse the effect entirely or partially. As you can see on layer three I have used the mask to tone down the ends of the white trails at the bottom of the firework to try to blend them into the background a little better.
The ability to stack layers on top of each other is one of the best things about Photoshop. It becomes so easy to put together different elements as in this case or make adjustments to the colour or contrast, using adjustment layers, that are completely reversible and adjustable and never need to become irreversible. For someone like me who can never make up their mind, that’s wonderful!
Using the move tool while selecting a layer enables you to move each element anywhere in the frame, so you can have hours of fun getting the positioning just right. Also on the ‘transform’ menu which is one of the choices under edit you have the chance to resize each element, rotate them or distort them in other interesting ways. I have done a fair amount of resizing in this picture.
Hue & Saturation
Another tool that I made extensive use of in this picture is ‘Hue & Saturation’. This can be found under the ‘Image’ -> ‘Adjustments’ menu.
There are various ways of changing colour in Photoshop, some are very subtle and are used for colour correction, but when we need a completely different colour the ‘hue’ slider is the one to use. The two pictures on the left are both from the same photograph, the one at the top is the original photo and the one at the bottom is the altered version. Not all hues will work well, you need to select the colour quite carefully bearing in mind that fireworks are usually bold prime colours. This one works quite well in blue as well and I used a blue version in the picture at the top of the page.
To further disguise that this is the same object I have reversed the image horizontally and rotated it a little. I tried flipping it vertically but it definitely looked upside down so I abandoned that one.
Lastly I also made extensive use of the ‘curves’ tool to try to balance the elements and get them to blend together. You can apply a separate curve adjustment to each layer and, as I mentioned above, but did not do on this occasion for the sake of simplicity, you can save the ‘curves’ adjustment as a separate layer. See my tutorial on contrast for more details on curves.
