Fireworks

[SMB2]

Anybody take pictures of fireworks this year, or past images? What techniques did you use?
I took these last weekend.

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[Phillydubs]

Wow those are some stunning pics!

[rickztahone]

Only 4th of July pics I took were of my family this year. I tried to enjoy the holiday more with them this year than focus on taking good shots. In the past, I have set up on the roof of my home and tried to get cool shots. I have liked doing both :)

TFS

[Second Hand Pat]

Stan, would you mind sharing your techniques? These are gorgeous. I was unable to see the fireworks this year as I was tending my parents.
Pat

[SomeFin's Fishy]

OK. Now you are just showing off!!:) Awesome pictures!!

[SMB2]

I have tried this technique before but because I was so close this year it changed the outcome a bit.
A couple of years back I read an article about shooting FW and it seemed like a good idea but I was always using a long lens and it worked OK, but did not fill the sky like these.
This year I made an effort to get a spot on the Potomac river right in front of the barge out on the river (turns out I should have been more to the right to get more water reflection). The FW are part of a birthday celebration for Old Town Alexandria Va. and were on the 9th.
The idea is to get multiple exposures and still control the light so things aren't blown out by a long exposure. Need a tripod and the the camera set for a shutter speed locked on BULB. If you just hold the shutter open for several explosions you are likely to get very blown out sections where the explosions overlap.
So you just leave the camera on bulb and cover the front of the lens with a dark cloth between explosions and remove it whenever you like. Of course it is a crapshoot as to timing but you get the rhythm and hopefully get lucky. The last two shots were really lucky to have such overlap.
These were taken at 24mm! so the sky was filled with FW. But I had to use an f stop of 11-18 to get the exposure correct because there was so much light. This perhaps makes the FW to crisp. I lightened up the foreground in LR to get some of the crowd silhouettes.

Part of the grand finale and kids playing with glow sticks.

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[rickztahone]

Cool, I had never heard of the covering of the lens when exposing to reduce over exposure but it makes perfect sense.