Come On, Light my Fire

This week, I'm giving a shout-out to all my pyros. This week's post will deal with fire and fireworks, and the best ways to take pictures of them.

FIYAAAAHHHH. It's fun, it's exciting, it's hawt. So how do you take pictures of it? It's honestly not that hard. The hardest part is making sure you have a proper shutter speed. Just about all fire and firework pictures are taken at night, so it's hard to find the right shutter speed that doesn't make the subject (the fire) too bright and the background too dark, if you want it to show in the image.

So these three pictures are kinda cool, right? But they're just kinda okay; nothing too exciting, but not painful to look at. So how do you make them better? Hint hint, longer shutter speed...

So these look a little better, right? More colors, you're able to see more of the subject, and they're more visually appealing. But what if you want EVEN MORE??? I'd recommend using a tripod for exposures longer than 1/20 of a second, especially at night. 

These four pictures show what happens when you leave the shutter open for anything longer than 1/2 second. The longer the shutter is open, the more light that is let in, and you can also see movement with this. So that's how I got the paths of the fireworks to show up in these four images above. Don't be afraid; you will have bad pictures when still trying to find a shutter speed you're happy with. Just hopefully you figure it out before the fireworks end!

Now, I'll switch gears and show you some pictures of sparklers. They are small, can be close-by, and more consistent than fireworks, so it's easier to get the perfect picture with them.

The first picture is not in succession with the other four, but I still think it's pretty cool, so I included it. The last four show four stages of the life of a sparkler. The nice thing about these is that usually you have a box of them, so if you screw up your images on the first sparkler, you can simply learn from your mistakes and start over and light another! (You really can't ask people running a fireworks show to "start over"...)

So... Tips:

• This lesson was pretty simple, but MESS AROUND WITH THE SHUTTER SPEED
• This is why you use the "M" manual setting, NOT AUTO.
• Use a tripod if you're planning on taking long exposures at a fireworks show
• Bring a flashlight. As dumb as it sounds, you don't want to be fumbling with your settings on your camera in the dark.
• Don't get burnt.

Hope you enjoyed my post this week. Tell your family, your friends, that random guy at the grocery store about my blog. If you have any questions, comments, ideas for future posts, please post in the comments! It makes me do this when you comment!

Good luck and have fun shooting!