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© Copyright Lou Morris Photography 2018

5
Feb
2016

Fireworks!



   

Like all eternal kids I’m a big fan of fireworks, so I was genuinely excited to be photographing the fireworks display for Pyro1 to mark the opening of the new Student Union accommodation right by Wembley Stadium. When it comes to pyrotechnics everything is timed to the second and this display was going to last for just 180! No pressure then! I knew that once the display began I would have very little room for manoeuvre, which meant I needed to arrive with plenty of time to scope the area and look for the best location to set up my tripod. As I’d be using longer exposures to capture the fireworks I needed to be sure that there were no lampposts in the foreground of my frame which would not only be distracting but the light from them would over-expose the image. Once I’d found my spot I waited for the start of the display with Mark who was acting as time-keeper and was in walkie-talkie contact with Neil on top of the building where the fireworks had been set up. Before I knew it we were off – and I began to understand the 3 and 5 and 10 second chunks of time that pyrotechnicans are used to working with. Three minutes actually felt much longer than I expected!

With any form of night photography it’s not really until you see the images on the back of the camera (or, even better, on your computer screen) that you get to see the full magnitude of the lights you’ve captured which are not visible for more than a split second to the human eye.

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Top Tips for photographing fireworks

  1. You’ll need a tripod and a cable release to avoid camera shake from the long exposures.
  2. You can use a relatively low ISO as the camera is fixed to the tripod.
  3. Although it is night and you will use longer exposures than you would for normal daytime handheld photography, you also don’t want to over-expose the image or catch the tail-end of firework bursts with plumes of smoke. There is an element of trial and error, so try out a few shots before the display begins (start around 4-6 second exposures, at F/11-16) to get a rough idea of what is working and during the display do check the back of your camera occasionally. Be prepared to adjust!
  4. Weather conditions will make a huge difference to the success of your fireworks photography – unfortunately, wind and rain are not friends of either photographers or the pyrotechnics!

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Tagged - display, event, fireworks, london, night, north, northwest, photography, pyrotechnics, stadium, wembley


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