(1/25 sec, f/4.0, Sigma 10-20mm at 10mm, no flash, ISO 800)

So this 4th of July I decided to walk down to the Charles River to watch the legendary Boston light show and catch the Pops' cannonade-laden 1812 Overture. I'd never made any serious attempt to shoot fireworks before but decided it would be fun to lug my gear over and try. It was a lot more challenging than I expected, but I was really happy with the results. Here are a few of the things I learned:

Before I even begin, make no mistake - tripods are your best friend. Hand-holding does NOT work. Ideally, I would have had a remote release, which would have contributed to sharper pictures by ensuring my finger on the shutter didn't move the camera at all, but I didn't have one at the time, so I had to make do without. Honestly, I don't think it made too much of a difference.

Anyway, there are a few reasons why fireworks can be difficult, and some advice to deal with the challenge.

1. The light can be difficult to expose for, and there isn't much time to adjust:

(1/50 sec, f/4.0, Canon 70-200mm at 70mm, no flash, ISO 800)

Some bursts are extremely bright , while others are beautiful but not particularly intense; you'll end up with a lot of under- or over-exposed images. The good thing about digital is that you can shoot hundreds of hundreds of images and then sort through them later. I prefer to shoot full manual rather than shutter or aperture priority, and since the twenty-minute show gave me plenty of time to experiment, I varied my settings widely and tried a few different lenses. A lot of people will recommend exposure times in the seconds to capture motion, but for the most part I preferred to kick up the ISO, open up the aperture and shoot at much higher speeds. Freezing the bursts gave the shots a lot more definition than more traditional photos I've seen:

(1/25 sec, f/4.0, Sigma 10-20mm at 10mm, no flash, ISO 1600)

Had there been some scenery or buildings to give the shot some points of interest I may have tried some much longer shots, though.

2. Any lack of wind will create a massive cloud which will ruin most shots by masking all the action. This makes the first thirty seconds or so the best opportunity to get sharp, clean pictures, so try to set up, focus, and anticipate the exposure before the explosions even begin. However, properly framed, the smoke can lead to some pretty epic images:

(1/13 sec, f/7.1, Sigma 10-20mm at 13mm, no flash, ISO 1600)

3. The shots can also be challenging to compose because you never know where blasts are going to appear, so you end up with hundreds of indistinct shots of little sparkles filling the entire frame. Sometimes its best to shoot people (or other foreground subjects in these situations) - they can tinge your pictures with an atmosphere of awe and help frame the shots:

(1/50 sec, f/4.0, Canon 70-200mm at 70mm, no flash, ISO 800)

Putting the fireworks in the background also allows you to experiment with less-traditional fireworks shots. For a few minutes I threw on my 50mm prime, and while I didn't find the focal length that great for the location, the bokeh the five-bladed aperture delivers allowed this cool effect:

(1/50 sec, f/3.2, Canon 50mm, no flash, ISO 200)

Here are a few more tips:

- Stake out your spot ahead of time. Make sure you know where where the blasts will actually appear, but try not to get in the way of others trying to watch.
- Either set the focus to infinity, and bring it back slightly, or let the autofocus do all the work. Your lens should have no problem focusing, but to avoid having it waste a lot of time zooming about every time you depress the shutter, let it autofocus once, and lock it in by holding that focus and switching to manual. You're pretty much set for the rest of the night, unless you want to shoot people or buildings.

- For more tightly cropped or abstract frames filled with color, focal lengths of 70mm+ work great. For most of the shots, though, I preferred wide-angles. Because they give so much coverage of the scene, you can set the exposure settings, and then not even worry about looking through the viewfinder. Just look up into the sky and keep your finger on the release. 80% of the shots I took were at an ultra-wide 10mm:

(0.5 sec, f/5.6, 10-20mm at 10mm, no flash, ISO 100)

Fireworks can be an awesome opportunity to capture really dramatic scenes. It's easy, though, to pass the time worrying about shutter speed, or looking through the viewfinder, or switching the ISO speed every five minutes. Don't forget to enjoy them.

I'll leave you with one last shot (one of my favorite of the night.) Walking home, still a bit stunned by the percussive, planet-shattering fifteen-second battery of explosions that closed the show, I caught a glimpse of the massive gunpowder smoke cloud descending over the city. Everything looked more than a little Nuclear Winter-ish, and I had to stop in my tracks and set up my tripod and camera all over again. I took this four-second exposure and headed home.

(4.0 sec, f/5.0, 10-20mm at 10.0, no flash, ISO 200)

Chris