I think it’s fair to say that at least most people are making the best of a bad situation, being held under a mandatory quarantine for months of end now, which is just now beginning to be lifted under extremely strict rules and regulations. So, rather than go out to see the fireworks every year like my brother and I normally do, we decided to bring the fireworks to us…at least the ones that are legal for residential use in New Jersey.
When my brother showed me these fireworks he’d bought in Asbury Park this year I just assumed they were the ones with a bigger bark than bite and would consist mostly of sparks spraying up and out for a few minutes before dying down. Well…they definitely did that; As well as almost took my feet and face off while I was getting what I figured would be innocent, uninteresting photos to just remember our Fourth of July in quarantine of 2020. Instead, what I got were some of my favorite firework photos I’ve taken to date, and a fun night of surprise and danger. It was great!
So, I have posted below some of my favorite photos from that night. To achieve the look of the first firework I simply attached my 24-70mm Nikkor lens to my Nikon D500, set an aperture of f.2.8, the highest it goes, set the ISO to around 1000 and then kept the shutter open for a quick 1/320 of a second. This shutter speed allowed the motion to be stopped and enough light to reach the sensor without blurring or overexposing. For the rest of the images, I switched my lens to my Nikkor 80-200mm and kept the settings roughly about the same, except towards the end when I just decided to set it to “bulb” mode and held down the shutter for a fraction of a second each time, allowing again, enough light without over or underexposing the photo while keeping everything important sharp and unblurred. This also allowed for some cool bokeh effects to occur as well with some of the sparks that were raining down all around myself and the firework container.
Hope you enjoy the results of these settings, and the amazing hell-fire of sparks I found myself surrounded by. It was truly a moment of beauty and awe:
