How to photograph fireworks

Fireworks shots fail bright: bursts washed to white, color gone, a sky of overlapping scribbles. The cause is a scene the meter was never built for: a mostly black frame that pushes every automatic reading toward overexposure, around a subject that is not lit but self-luminous, drawing its own picture onto the sensor as it moves. That flips the usual arithmetic: the shutter decides how long the streak grows, while aperture and ISO alone decide how bright it writes (leaving the shutter open longer does not brighten a burst, it only stacks more of them). So the working recipe is a long-exposure trap set before the first shell: manual everything, focus locked at infinity, and a shutter you open as the shell climbs and close after the break.

Flat illustration of a camera on a tripod at the lower left aimed into a large framed view: a faceted night skyline and bridge sit low along the frame's bottom edge while a dashed teal circle high in the empty sky rings a starburst (the patch of sky the shot is framed around before any burst arrives).

Starting points

Mode: Manual, or bulb with a remote release: the show is too dark and too fast for any automatic mode to meter honestly.
Shutter: 2–6 s to start; in bulb, open as the shell climbs and close after the break. The shutter draws the streak's length, not its brightness.
Aperture: f/8 to start. The burst's brightness lives here: step toward f/11 if color washes toward white.
ISO: 100–200. The sky is already black; extra gain only clips the burst's color sooner.
Focus: Manual, set at infinity on the first burst, then left alone. Autofocus has nothing to grab between bursts.
Support: Tripod plus a remote or cable release; stabilization off once the camera is mounted.

In the field

Scout a position upwind of the launch site: smoke drifts, and by mid-show it sits wherever the wind puts it.
Frame wider than the opening bursts suggest; finales climb higher and spread wider.
Set infinity focus on the first burst, then stop touching the ring.
Watch the launches, not the screen: open on the rise, close after the break.
Check one early frame for washed-out color; correct it with aperture, not shutter.

When it fails

Bursts washed to white: Overexposure of a self-luminous subject, and the shutter is the wrong lever to reach for. Close down a stop and drop the ISO; the streak's brightness answers to aperture and gain, never to time.
Haze swallowing the show by mid-display: Smoke, not softness. The sky is cleanest in the opening minutes: treat the first bursts as the real shoot, and stand upwind so the drift carries away from the frame instead of across it.
Streaks that wobble and jag: The camera moved during the exposure. A tripod and a remote release take the hands out; turning stabilization off stops the motor hunting against a fixed mount.

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