Tips from a pro on shooting fireworks

It’s summertime, which means it’s fireworks season in San Diego. There are no lack of shows here to get out and photograph. The Big Bay Boom, California’s largest fireworks show, starts at 9 p.m. July 4 in San Diego Bay. A number of fireworks shows throughout the county are scheduled for tonight. In addition, places like Seaworld regularly have shows throughout the summer.

Here are some tips for photographing fireworks. The most important: Your camera needs to be still for long exposures. A tripod works best for this, but not everyone is going to go out and buy one for fireworks. A simple hack here; set your camera on something still, the ground, a block wall, or (your own) parked car.

Another important tip: Shoot on manual exposure and focus. Your camera won’t know what to do on auto with a dark sky. A safe starting point would be ISO 200, 2 seconds at f8. The above image was taken at 100 ISO f8 at 4 seconds. Manually pre-focus on where the fireworks will be.

Once you have have your technical part down, look for an interesting composition. All fireworks look the same in the sky, so try to get something in the foreground or background to give it a sense of place or scale. People, landmarks or bodies of water for a ref lection are a few possibilities. There are plenty of opportunities for this with all the shows in the county.

Photographing the earlier part of show is often better so you don’t run the risk of smoke filling the air, and oftentimes the finale has way too many going off at the same time and doesn’t make for a clean image.

K.C. ALFRED U-T FILE Fireworks during the Big Bay Boom above the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt at San Diego Bay in 2021.