Hi everybody,
a new year has started and I wish you all a happy new year. I was this new years eve in Frankfurt and we had the chance to see great fireworks. A lot of people were on the street and fireworks came from all sides. Unfortunately, the sky was pretty foggy, so you can not see the impressive skyline of Frankfurt.
But, I’m still happy with the result of the photos. To shot fireworks is in fact pretty easy. All you need is a camera with manual bulb mode, a tripod, and a remote control.
1. Position the camera towards the scenery, where you expect the fireworks.
2. Do a test shot to fix the auto focus and set if afterwards off.
3. Put the camera into manual mode and set it on bulb mode and a high aperture (e.g. f8 or f11).
4. Connect the remote control and wait for the fireworks.
5. If the fireworks starts, press your remote control and hold it as long as a fireworks rocket needs to burn down. It depends on your ambient light and how lighty the fireworks is. But after 6-7 seconds you should let go the button. If you are lucky, you get the complete fireworks on one frame.
6. Repeat that and make multiple exposures of different fireworks. It’s really fun, once you have set up everything right. And you will become better in capture great fireworks over time.
Post-production.
7. Pretty easy: Upload your best firework photos (from the same position) into one photoshop document with one layer for every photo.
8. Change the blend mode to “lighten”. The different frames mainly differ in the fireworks on it. Fireworks is usually the lightest on a photo. So you end up with one photo with the best fireworks from all the different frames.
9. You can use masks to mask out fireworks that you don’t like and adjust the final photo with some layer adjustments.
Try it out. It’s fun and easy
Werner
