Free July 2011 Desktop Calendar

Welcome to summer! The 4th of July weekend makes it official... summer is here. It's time for cookouts, beaches and fireworks. However you decide to spend your summer, have a great time and be safe.

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Rockets Red Glare

I'd never photographed fireworks before, so I decided this year would be the year. Originally, I thought of going over to Jersey City to shoot the Macy's fireworks, but I didn't really want to deal with the mega crowds or the train ride. So I did an online search and found a fireworks show close to home in Nutley, NJ, only a 10 minute drive away.

When shooting fireworks, some key things to keep in mind are: a tripod is a must; use a zoom lens to make zooming in or out easy if you need to; set the focus on manual, then adjust it to infinity and forget about it; set the ISO 100; select an aperture between f8 - f16. You will have to adjust the shutter speed a bit until you get it right. I shot most of my images at 2.5 seconds. Next time I might experiment with speeding up the shutter speed a tad bit. Oh, and the other tool I used was my wireless remote. Once I had the camera aimed in the right location, I didn't have to touch it again. This helped to minimize any shake from manually pressing the shutter.

My settings:
Exposure 2.5 sec
Aperture f/11.0
Focal Length 28 mm
ISO 100