Here’s the truth about fireworks shots.  In order to get that truly amazing fireworks shot you need to be familiar both with where the fireworks will be shot off that year as well as the optimal spot in the city to take a shot.  Typically this ‘optimal place’ will not be empty and you will need to set up way ahead of time in order to get the spot.

While you are setup in this spot, you will need to deal with photographers and spectators setting up right in front of you and if you need to use the bathroom you can consider your spot gone.  If you have kids, you’ll either need to not take them or they will get restless waiting hours before the fireworks.

The other thing to consider here in the Seattle area is that all of our fireworks shows suck.  The fireworks companies here simply do not utilize the more creative shells that many companies on the East coast utilize.  The one show I know of not shot by a local company here – the Seattle show shot by Pyro Spectacular – also sucks.  This puzzled me for some time, as Pyro Spectacular has a good reputation in the fireworks industry.  After some digging I found that the city of Seattle is not a fireworks friendly city and is such a pain to deal with in terms of budget and restrictions that the end result sucks.

Part of being a truly professional photographer is knowing when not to click the shutter.  Fireworks are pretty, but the chances that you will get a great shot haphazardly are close to infinitesimal.  If you are going out with the intention to photograph the fireworks show, my recommendation is to not go out at all.

Several years ago I got sick of fighting the crowds and found my fireworks shots no better than the millions of other horrible fireworks shots that plague the ‘Net after the 4th.  Therefore, I decided to go a different route and I now purchase some small fireworks items and shoot them off in our backyard with the kids.

Our kids now absolutely love the 4th of July and count the days before we shoot the fireworks.  As we have a small backyard I don’t buy anything big – mainly sparklers (the wood kind), some small fountains, bees, and pagodas (a yearly tradition – each child gets his/her own pagoda).  I do not shoot any festival ball and we stopped shooting firecrackers after some of our guests complained about the noise.

This year I hope to take some pictures of the event, as last year we used small sparklers that expired quickly and I spent all of my time distributing them.  My shots may not be masterpieces, but they will be far more memorable and valuable to me than the junk I would have taken at the fireworks shows here.

Therefore, please do your part this year and save energy by not forcing servers around the Internet to transfer your garbage among the millions of garbage fireworks shots that come after the 4th.

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In this segment my father will be prominently featured as he attempts to break the world record for number of breaks in a shell. I’m not sure how long he will be on, but I think it should be around ten minutes.

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While I have rarely taken professional fireworks photos myself, I grew up in the fireworks industry and have worked on numerous professional fireworks shows in the past.  Both of my parents work in the fireworks industry – my mother (who has sold fine art prints of fireworks for some time) full time and my father part time.  I am also a member of the Pyrotechnics Guild International, where my father has won several international competitions. 

1)     Use bulb – no one shutter speed will work for all shots

2)     Use a tripod – should be obvious

3)     Place the tripod on stable ground – bleachers do not work

4)     Photograph away from any lights – particularly street lights.  Often they turn them out just before the show but sometimes they do not.

5)     If you are photographing from a popular place, get there early because you don’t want people in front of you and the best spots will be taken quickly.

6)     Don’t try to get too much in one shot.  You want to be able to recognize the shells – this is especially relevant during the finale.

7)  You can get more fireworks in a shot by putting a piece of black paper in between shots while using bulb mode.  In my opinion the effect looks a bit fake and you can tell it was done by the smoke patterns, but a number of people do prefer the photos.

Here are some tips on composing good shots.  They are based on my opinions after seeing thousands of fireworks pictures.

1. Do try to get a well known monument, skyline, or building in the shot.  These are often the more interesting fireworks pictures.
2. Do try to get ground shots of fireworks (if the show has them - see below).  Very often these shots are much more interesting than aerial ones.
3. Do try to experiment with shots of standard shells going off.  Try such things as spinning the lens, zooming way in, zooming while focusing, etc.  There are millions of shots of peonies and chrysanthemums (see below) out there – please do not add to the collection.

Now for some info that may be new:

1)     Unless you are shooting a small local fireworks show, everything will be in the air (vs ground pieces) so that’s what I’ll focus on most.  Some shows may use ‘mines’ which are shells that are aimed upwards on the ground.  You can get some gorgeous shots if you get the mines in the right frame, but to do that you need to know where they’ll go off.  General rules on finding mines.

a.     If the show uses a barge, no mines

b.    If you see a mine, expect more to go off near it (of course you may be in the wrong spot)

c.     When you get to the site, try to see where the fireworks are being setup.  Mines are much closer to the ground than the pipes for aerial shots so if they are there with some sharp eyes you can see them.

2)     There are two types of aerial shells – ball shells and canister shells (OK – I have seen square shells but they are not used commercially in the US).  When the shell is fired, you can tell which type it is based on how the shell goes up (the canister will spin).  Why do you care?  Ball shells typically have one break except for some of the very largest ones.  Canister shells will have multiple breaks and are typically more interesting shots.

3)     There are two main types of ball shells.  It can be tough determining the difference at times with your eye, but your shots will notice the difference so you should try to pay attention.

a.     Peony – stars light after the shell bursts

b.    Chrysanthemum – stars light when the shell bursts.

4)     As mentioned before, canister shots are often (but not always) multi-break.  When you have seen a lot of shells, you will be able to predict with high accuracy how many breaks a shell will have and what types.  The following can be used as rough guidelines.

a.     If you look closely, the other break(s) will separate from the main shell before it bursts, though this doesn’t always happen.

b.    Canister shells burst in a different pattern than ball shells – more of a rectangle than a circle.  If this break is very plain (just colored stars), you can almost always expect another break.

c.     Generally shells with tails will not multibreak.

5)     There are obviously many types of breaks, but the following may provide info for shots

a.     Torbillions – swirl around and make a buzzing noise, very common, can be hard to expose correctly because they are often white

b.    Cyatines – equivalent of an M-80 in the air, sound like firecrackers, common and easy to get in the shot because they are not very bright

c.     Bottom shot – a loud boom and always the last break.  If you hear a “ba ba ba” then there will always be a “boom”.  Can be hard to expose correctly because they are very bright but can make gorgeous shots if everything breaks right.

d.    Go getter – each star has a tiny rocket attached to it and takes off in its own direction, can be confused with other affects but once you see one the effect is unmistakable, somewhat rare shell because it is extremely expensive and time consuming to make, almost impossible to get a good photo of one because the way the stars move makes the shot look cluttered.  Of course I am biased on this shell because my father used one to win an international tournament.

e.     Crosette – this is actually not really a multibreak shell because the technique is in how you build the stars vs multiple timed breaks, very common shell, effect is for shell to break in three, then each break to break in three, not very bright so best if you try to get all of the crosettes, sometimes have tails (where they area often called ‘palm trees’), the largest of these are among the most gorgeous shells around and if you can get the right shot it will be frameworthy.  Perhaps the most beautiful shell I ever saw was a 16” crosette that filled the entire sky – but it is highly unlikely a show can afford a shell like that here (probably costs over $2000).

f.     Flower bouquet – multiple colored breaks – the most I have seen is 11, relatively common shell but I don’t remember seeing one last year, sometimes can tease with a bottom shot but you can tell the difference because of the way the breaks fire (flower bouquet is much faster because it is trying to get as much color in the sky as possible), makes great shots because of the colors

g.    Lampari – a fireball in the sky, basically it’s a bottom shot with kerosene added, hard to expose right because it is bright but fiery, I’ve seen some decent shots focused on the lampari (they exist in larger single shells as well) but never combined as a break in a shell, these used to be rare but I have seen smaller versions of them in commercial shows recently

7)     Other types of shells

a.     Willow – unmistakable charcoal stars that seem to hang in the sky forever, easy to expose because it’s not very bright, make gorgeous shots if the framing is correct but its best to try to get as much of the willow as you can

b.    Pattern shells – rings, stars, butterflies – seems like new ones come out each year.  The trick is to expose just right so the ring looks like a ring.  You are really at the mercy of the shell here – because a lot of them don’t break right.  I’ve seen a number of nice shots with pattern shells combined with other shells.

c.     Salute – a single big bang, photograph as you would a bottom shot, often used in finales (in my opinion a finale is not reputable without them)

d.    Comet – has a tail but no burst, the trick to getting a good shot here is the framing

e.     Strobe – not really a shell but the way a shell rises, resulting in usually a peony or chrysanthemum burst, the tail basically strobes, hard to get a good shot of this type of tail so I would focus more on the burst

f.     Rockets – very rarely used in commercial shows because the sticks come back down, extremely tricky getting a good shot of these unless there is a large flight – even then it is tricky

Other bits:

-       Some of the most interesting shots I have seen are of the people shooting the fireworks.  You’ll need a small show for this because larger shows are shot electrically.  If you contact one of the fireworks companies beforehand you may be able to arrange access but you’ll need to be exceptionally nice because they are naturally a paranoid industry.  If you are seriously interested in fireworks photography the best way to get access is to work a few shows with a fireworks company.  This way they will get to know you and trust you and then you can obtain access to photograph shows you are not part of – the downside is you have to work on the 4^th J

-       Try to be original with your shots.  Everyone tries to photograph fireworks and honestly 99.9% of these shots are very boring when you have seen a lot of them.  Try to be artistic and you’ll have a much better chance of getting a good shot.

-       Get to know the fireworks.  It is said the best wildlife photographers learn about the animals they are photographing.  The same can be said for fireworks.  Learn to recognize the different types of shells before they are fired and the trend during a fireworks show (more impressive shells are fired later).  Once you understand what you are shooting, you will be able to use this knowledge to create interesting frames.

For those of you who live near Seattle, I am still trying to find a good show here.  In general fireworks here in the Pacific Northwest are far inferior to the shows on the East coast (or even in the Midwest).  I’m not exactly sure why – though perhaps because the fireworks industry has been heavily affected by the Italian immigrant fireworks companies that settled there long ago and influenced the style there.  Those shows tend to have much more innovative shells and a lot more noise (“Spanish finale”).  They also tend to shoot bigger shells.

So far I have been to the downtown Seattle and Bellevue shows and found neither of them worth the wait in terms of getting there early to get a good spot.  Last year we saw a show from our house – seemed to be Sammamish but it could have been Issaquah – that looked interesting.

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