I tried, again, to capture some firework magic this year.
A tripod helps for sure; the “good” camera doesn’t hurt. Here are a few of my favorite after-dark photos from our time in New Hampshire.
I completely forgot we had the camera until after sunset and after the talent show, unfortunately. When I remembered, without much time to adjust, we used a tripod and exposures ranging from four to 30 seconds, and mostly just played around as our hosts put on their annual fireworks show from the lake.
Cameras don’t like to auto-focus in the dark – more of those magical, blurred shots another day – so it’s really important to leave some distance between you and the show, and to set the focus to infinity if you can’t dial it in manually.
We also tried some long exposures of the night sky.
And when we saw that the kids had left their glow glasses for other camp distractions, we played with those a bit, too.
We are by no means photographers (and I rely on my iphone more than might be reasonable), but we’re really enjoying some of the effects we’ve gotten with long exposures and unique light sources. What else is worth a try?
image credits: Union Jack Creative