Taking photos of fireworks

In August are the festivals of San Timoteo in Luarca, my town. Every year, on the eve of the main festival, which gives its name to the entire festivities, fireworks are launched from the pier for the enjoyment of the staff.

Although I still haven’t dedicated an article to the camera I bought in December (and it hasn’t rained or anything since then) I’m sure the smartest of you will have noticed that lately I’ve been dedicating a little free time to photography. One of the things I most wanted to do was take photos of fireworks, so I decided to buy some paraphernalia to take them in the best way possible, this is with:

• An automatic shutter release: To avoid movements when pressing the camera shutter in long exposure photos so that they do not turn out blurry and, by the way, to be able to keep a little eye on the fires.
• A tripod: Essential for taking night photos without them being blurry.

However, having a shutter release and a tripod does not guarantee that the photos will turn out well by any means. Exposure time and diaphragm aperture are very important. I had read in forums and seen photos on Flickr that the normal thing is usually an exposure between 2 and 10 seconds and an F8/F9 with manual focus towards infinity.

What I didn’t take into account initially was that the longer the exposure time, the more fires that came out at the same time, the more burned areas would appear with a lot of light, and that happened to me at the beginning. Little by little I changed the exposure time, making it vary and the lights from the fires no longer came out in whitish colors.

Another thing I didn’t take into account initially was that the fires shoot out in unpredictable places, so we must have a wide angle of vision if we want to avoid getting cut off. That’s why I shot at 17mm, although I should have shot at a little more, at least 24mm because they all came out with a lot of empty spaces that I had to cut out.

You have some photos of fireworks more on my Flickr. They are not perfect, but I promise to improve with practice :)