Photographing Fireworks

[Toucan1967]

Shooting Fireworks

I have been asked by a few people how I get my fireworks shots so here are a few tips that might be helpful along with some information on fireworks that might help too.

The earliest recorded major fireworks display was in 1572 for Queen Elizabeth I at Warwick castle, there were another two shows at Kenilworth castle in 1575.

In 1605 Guy Fawkes unsuccessfully tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament, this is where many of us still associate fireworks with 5th November.

There are many different types of fireworks and we can split them into three categories,

1, Ground mounted static, eg Catherine wheels, Gerbs and Fire writing

2, Ground fired low altitude, eg Cakes, Candles and mines

3, Ground fired high altitude, eg Rockets and Shells

The static fireworks just burn with coloured lights and emit sparks and don’t really do very much so predicting what they will do and where they will be is quite easy.

The ground fired low altitude material will fire comets, and various effects into the air and these will normally be from ground level to maybe 100-150 feet in altitude approx so again the prediction of what they will do and where they will be is quite easy.

The ground fired high altitude material is another matter and is not as easy to predict.

Starting with rockets, these will be launched by means of a motors and can be followed from launch to burst, they are unpredictable as they will always fly into the wind due to the stabilizing stick catching the cross wind (professional shows are using fewer rockets due to this dangerous characteristic)

Shells range from 2" (50mm) up, the largest I have seen is 18" (450mm) these are fired from a mortar tube and very rarely leave a trail as the launch (sometimes a small spiral can be see from the burning time delay fuse) Shells are either fired vertically or in a fan. you can normally tell when there is a shell lift as there is a dull thud as it leave the tube, when the shell reaches it’s height the time delay fuse will make it burst into the wonderful colours and shapes we all love.

A 2" (50mm) shell will go 200 feet into the air with a 20 feet burst

A 6" (150mm) shell will go 600 feet into the air with a 60 feet burst

and so on.

A good display will try and fill the sky from ground level up to whatever the max height of the shells are and this will make for the best pictures.

Sorry about the gibbering now on to the photography side.

You will need......

A Camera with a wide angle lens between 10mm and 25mm (on a crop sensor camera)

A good Tripod

A Cable release

When to get there and where to be....

Try and get to your display viewing area while it’s still light as it’s much easier to set up and you can normally see the firing site so you can find the center line of the display, fireworks are better viewed from a distance so you don’t need to push to the front of a crowd where you strain your neck looking up at the big stuff.

How I do it....

I set the camera in manual mode, 100 ISO with an aperture of f11 and the exposure set to Bulb (B setting)

I like to use the portrait orientation as this will cover everything from the low through to the high altitude material, focus on the firing site then switch the lens to manual focus, now all you need to do is set the angle of the lens so that the bottom of the frame is just below the firing site and the top of the frame has plenty of sky or whatever you background is, the only time I do this differently is when shooting across water, I then try and get a 30/70 split of water/sky to catch the reflected colours.

When it comes to show time I just click away on the cable release with times between 2 and 5 seconds, you have to gauge the brightness of the material in the air, I find that the Red and Silver seem to be the hottest colours for causing over exposure, the hardest fireworks to catch are the willow shells (Gold falling like a willow tree) as this is only burning charcoal and is not very bright as it falls.

I hope that this will be of help to some of you and I look forward to seeing the results of your work, PLEASE remember that these are only guidelines that work for me and experimentation is the name of the game.

Remember also that fireworks are dangerous, being the member of a professional display organisation I have seen the not so good side of fireworks and it makes me cringe to see pictures posted of people holding a lit firework, fireworks are fun if used properly.

[MartJ]

wow Andy , Thanks for the advice as i haven't as of yet attempted to shoot fireworks , Thanks for the effort in the post as well not a 5 minute job there .

[Toucan1967]

Hi Martin,
I'm pleased you found the information usefull, I didn't get a chance to shoot anyting this year as the 5 shows we did needed all hands on site to fire, I look forward to seeing anything that you shoot if you managed to find a dry show.

[MartJ]

Hi Andy

i had a display of my own spend close to £200 plus guests bought some too , same here absolutely poured down so i didnt want to get my camera out in that , also i was the pyro so would have been running around like a headless chicken mulitasking , hopefully next year or even new years eve