Fireworks —
Note: To remain timely, this picture interrupts the One-A-Day queued images. Please check today’s Regularly Queued Picture — Thanks!
From the Bloomington Summer Fete Fireworks on July 3rd.
This particular burst was one of my favorites! Timing is the hardest part of photographing fireworks, and somehow I managed to nail this one! This style of multi–burst was almost a second wave after a prior burst, and catching them right when they started was really tricky — honestly more luck than anything!
If you’re not yet aware, this photo — and the one a few days ago — is fudged… Most fireworks pictures end up being entirely black except for the flares themselves. It’s nearly impossible to get the background/foreground to appear unless the shutter is held open a long time (10 or 15+ seconds, at least). In this picture the burst is real and from a single picture, but it’s composited on a background sky taken before the fireworks began (darkened for effect) and foreground taken during the fireworks finale (I held the shutter for 15 seconds, giving the illuminated people in the foreground).
And really, would you actually want to look at just an unidentifiable funky light pattern on a plain black background? Having looked through 500+ such photos from this past weekend, you lose interest mighty quick when there’s no context to the strange lights…