A shot from Temecula's 2009 fireworks show

I’ve been taking photos of Temecula’s public fireworks shows for several years now, and I’m always amazed at how fun and easy it can be. There is a little bit of equipment that you need, and a few settings to know then all you have to do is wait for a fireworks display (which can be the hard part, especially if you’re anxious to give this type of photography a try!).

The equipment list

• A camera (duh), preferably a DSLR, with the ability to go full manual on it.
• A reasonably wide-angle lens
• A good steady tripod
• A way to remotely trigger your camera. I use this remote trigger with my camera, and my daughter uses this remote trigger with her Canon Rebel. There are less expensive remote triggers out there, but I haven’t used any so I’m not able to recommend any.

If you’re going to a local fireworks show, you’ll also need a good location really close to the action, and preferably one away from parking lot or stadium lights and trees. When I’m taking photos of a fireworks show, I try to get there a couple of hours beforehand to make sure I have enough light to see to set up my equipment. Since I know the location where Temecula fires off their fireworks, it isn’t too hard to guess where the bursts will be. I’ll put the camera on the tripod, attach the remote trigger cord, and angle the camera towards where I think the fireworks will be. And then wait…

Pre-Focus your lens

After getting things set up, I put my lens on manual focus and focus it to infinity “∞”. This way, the camera doesn’t have to worry about running the focus motor during the fireworks show. Just make sure that when the show is over that you put your lens back on auto-focus.

The settings to know

You will want to use manual mode on your camera. “Yikes! I don’t know what settings to use!” Don’t worry, I’ll provide the settings that I’ve used for several fireworks shows and have gotten good results with them. If you use one of the automatic modes, your camera is probably going to meter on the dark sky and wind up doing something silly, like leaving the shutter open for 15-30 seconds (which is waaay too long for fireworks).

A slow shutter speed is key, as is a decent aperture. The long shutter speed makes the exposure take longer so that you get the pretty trails of the fireworks. However, don’t go overboard, otherwise you risk getting a big clump of light (which isn’t so nice to look at). Since fireworks are pretty bright, you’ll also need to set a reasonable aperture for your camera. This shot was taken at f/8 for 2 seconds at ISO 100:

You can see the remnants of a fading burst, a burst that was caught, and the trail of one going up. You can also see the smoke from previous launches. Smoke is something that you’re just going to have to contend with. It can sometimes be dealt with afterwards if it’s not terribly intrusive to the shot.

Lens selection

The lens that you use depends on how much sky you have available for the fireworks. If you’re far away, the fireworks will appear very small if you use a wide angle lens. If you manage to get up close, a wide angle lens will give definitely give you more sky, and will allow you to capture more bursts. For Temecula’s 2010 show, I shot using my 24-70 f/2.8L lens at 24mm. However, with settings that wide, here’s something else to be cognizant about…

Background background background

At parks, or stadiums, there can be distracting elements in the photo’s background. One of the things Temecula likes to do with their fireworks show is to have a big fan of fireworks like what’s shown in this shot. Since they time their shows to music, it’s usually pretty cool to watch. However, these shots rarely go up high, so things low to the ground are going to intrude into the shot. After lowering the angle of my camera to get this fan, I managed to get some of those lovely orange sodium parking lot lights, a tree, and part of a light for a baseball field. Since I have the benefit of seeing the actual RAW file, I can also see the roof of a building that’s also in the shot.

Fortunately, most of these things can be edited out afterwards.

The Grand Finale

The grand Finale is usually the most spectacular part of the show, and also the brightest. The bursts are usually happening very close together during this part, and it can be tricky to get a good shot that just doesn’t look like a big blob of light.

This shot shows the scattering of light from all the bursts occupying the same piece of sky. This photo was shot at f/10 for .4 of a second at ISO 100 and it’s almost letting in too much light. There’s also an incredible amount of smoke during the finales and with all the light, it’s going to show up in your shot.

The End Result

Even with all the challenges, taking photos of fireworks can be very fun and rewarding. When done correctly, you’ll be able to amaze your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers with your fireworks shots.

I had the privilege again to take the school photos for the MorningStar Christian Academy and the Hands of Grace Christian Support Group. These students are an amazing and dynamic group. Not only does it amaze me watching these students mature over the years, but so see their academic levels rise/ It’s such a blessing to work with such a great group of kids and parent educators! Anyway, on to some of the photos…

So Sara came by for some senior photos, and she and Alyssa went over to Harveston one afternoon for a photo shoot. It was a lot of fun to work with her and her family. She has a sweet wonderful Christian spirit and it is a pleasure to know her.

I hope everyone had a safe and sane Fourth of July. I enjoy taking photos of fireworks displays, and the City of Temecula put on an outstanding show at the Ronald Regan Sports Park this year. The fireworks and the music were a very good fit, and especially well timed.

Here are a few shots from my secret location at the sports park:

Note: This is a post that I’ve been tinkering with for some time and have finally decided to just post it

Micro stock is an unusual animal. For those who aren’t familiar with it, there are sites where you can license images royalty free for not a whole lot of money. This is great if you need an image for a presentation, a report, or a website. In the past, if you needed an image, you either had to:

a) take the picture yourself. This would work out well if you had the equipment necessary for such an endeavor. If not, it made the image a bit on the expensive and time consuming side.
b) hire a photographer to take the photos you needed. You would get your image fairly quickly, and you wouldn’t have to buy a bunch of stuff, but it could still be expensive.
c) contact a stock photograph agency and license the image from them. This can range from not a whole lot of money to quite a bit, depending on what you were planning on on doing with the image.

But I digress…

I started in my micro stock journey a few years ago, submitting photos to a couple of agencies. Sales were slow on most agencies, and rather brisk at one popular subscription site. After my portfolio reached a certain size, or perhaps a certain age, sales began to accelerate on some agencies, and drop off on others.

Maintaining portfolios on about a dozen agencies is a lot of work–each one has a different procedure for uploading images, assigning keywords and submitting images. Each agency also has differing tastes as to what they wanted to sell. One agency would reject most everything I submitted as being not what their customers were looking for while others would take everything. These inconsistencies between differing business models was just part and parcel of being an “independent.”

And this is how it went for a couple of years. Monitoring sales, keeping track of statistics, figuring out keywords, uploading, assigning categories, oh, and occasionally taking the odd photograph or two in between.

Towards the end of 2009, a number of major changes in the stock industry had occurred. A couple of the agencies to which I contributed closed down. Another agency had it’s portfolio moved completely to a subscription site, and then shut down. Another agency made some changes in their commission structure so that I was nearly giving my work away.

I finally had had enough of playing with all these different agencies, and decided to hang my hat on the one that had consistently outperformed all the other agencies I submitted to: iStockPhoto.

So it was with a bit of trepidation that I started pulling out of the different agencies. It wasn’t too hard on the agencies where sales were very rate. It was a bit harder on some of the others. I wound up being in a situation where I had to wait about three months before I could withdraw my images from one final agency. It was a very slow three months.

Finally, in March, I was able to click the “Exclusive” button on iStock, and I really haven’t given it another thought. It’s much nicer with only having to deal with one agency. While I may not make as many sales quantity wise as when I was independent, it’s definitely been worth it financially.

Note: I’ve been tinkering with this post for a little bit and finally decided to just post it. It was going to be a lot longer, but I shortened it up considerably.

I do a little bit of stock photography. A couple of months ago, I made the transition to being exclusive with just one agency — iStockPhoto. It was one of those things that I hemmed and hawed over for quite a while before making the final decision, but it has been sooo worth it. It’s one of those things that afterwards I find myself saying “Why didn’t I do that sooner?”

Here’s the link to my iStock page and this is a direct link to my gallery there.

I just upgraded the blog software to WordPress 3.0. Everything went great, and the Tofurious theme seems to be working just fine!

So I get an email from Kaite the other day asking about a surprise photo session for her mother. What a neat idea, and a great Christmas surprise! We had originally thought about doing this shoot in Old Town Temecula, but with all the holiday decorations, we decided that studio shots would probably be better. We met the other evening, and here’s the results. Katie’s father is a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, her brother just received his officer’s commission in the Marine Corps, and is a Second Lieutenant. Her husband is a Petty Officer Third Class in the Navy (soon to be promoted to 2nd class!). It was a privilege and an honor to photograph a family that’s given such a commitment of service to our country.

On to the photos:

Ryan, 2nd. Lt, USMC

Here’s everyone in uniform

Now for some more casual photos: