Many people think that professional photographers “just know” what the perfect settings are for any given situation. Nothing is further from the truth. The skill is simply being able to guesstimating a good starting point, and being able to know which tweaks to make based on the results of our experimentation.

Come inside my brain, and let’s look at how I shot this 4th of July Fireworks picture.

1. I decided to follow my own advice from a blog I had written about using the automatic Fireworks Function on the camera. I thought that would be quite convenient if it did in fact work. Let me remind you that the Fireworks Function sets the ISO at 100, the shutter speed at two seconds, and the aperture at F8, and it also focuses on infinity. I had no idea how much of the people I would see at that exposure.

In this particular frame it’s actually getting dark outside. I have my camera on the tripod and I took a test exposure with the fireworks function. It’s overexposed and you can see that people who are moving are blurred in the image. But I could also see that the camera was focusing properly so this picture made sense to me. This picture makes the scene appear way way brighter than it actually was. I could still see the camera but it was getting dark. It’s the exposure that makes this picture seem like everything is much brighter than reality.

 

2. So when the fireworks started it quickly became clear that the exposure being set by the automatic Fireworks Function was way too dark for the people on the ground. The fireworks in the sky were properly exposed, but this was not the picture I wanted. I instantly realized I was going to have to go to manual exposure. I used my iPhone as a flashlight to adjust my aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. A little bit tricky. The exposure here is two seconds at ISO 100 at f8—those are the auto Fireworks Function settings.

 

3. At this point, I was doing everything I could to get the proper exposure for the people on the ground. I was shooting raw and my hope was that if I got a properly
exposed people picture I could deal with the sky in editing later. The danger was that if the sky was too over-exposed the fireworks would be “clipped” and just gone and I wouldn’t be able to darken them. My exposure here is 4 seconds at F2.8 at ISO 800. Everything is brighter than it needs to be.

 

4. The problem with the show was that one minute it would be very bright and another minute it would be significantly darker depending on the kinds of fireworks that were being shot at that moment. Experimentation experimentation experimentation. This was another example with the same exposure but just darker fireworks.

 

5. It also became clear that vertical was the way to go. I honestly did not know where those fireworks were going to be going off so I started out in a horizontal format, but quickly changed to vertical. This was just one more thing to mess with. At this stage, I clearly had decided that photographing the fireworks was more important to me than enjoying the fireworks.

 

6. I just put this one here to show you the variation that was happening from moment to moment. It all depended on what fireworks were blasting at any given second. Same settings: 4 seconds at F2.8 at ISO 800.

 

7. So this is 1 second at F2 .8 at ISO 800. I was going to have to experiment. I am completely making this up as I’m going along. Oops, I shot landscape by mistake again!

 

8. Now we are getting there. The guy that was getting cut in half on the bottom left-hand corner bothered me, but I just decided to deal with him in editing later. Every time I moved the camera to recompose I was risking having a crop that I didn’t like. Remember, I was doing this all in darkness.

 

9. This is what my final frame looked like coming straight out of the camera. The final exposure was 1.5 seconds at F4 at ISO 800. Obviously, the stuff in the sky is too bright but I had decided I would fix that in Lightroom.

 

10. And this is my final picture after the editing job. Essentially, I darkened down the top three-fourths of the picture. And I removed the man in the bottom left-hand corner who is getting cut in half. Poor guy.

The whole trick with the final image was to determine how bright the people should be relative to how bright the fireworks should be. I’m not really sure I got it perfect.

But I am rather proud of this photograph. It’s an unusual fireworks picture and I really did have to think on my feet as I was shooting it. There were no injuries.

Just to be clear, all of the song and dance and complication of this photograph was the result of trying to include the people in the picture. If all I had cared about were the fireworks up against the dark sky the Fireworks Function on my camera would have worked perfectly.

Now get out of my brain and go shoot some amazing fireworks!

And share your questions, issues, and experiences in the comments below!

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