The first time I photographed fireworks was the summer after I bought my first DSLR. I had read a few articles and decided to try it. The results were some of my absolute favorite and most proud photos at the time. They looked so great!

Over the years, I’ve tried to capture them in different ways, from when my kiddo was a toddler to now when she’s not-so-little anymore.

But a few years ago, when we moved into a new home and I decided to start photographing the sunset over our home, I realized an opportunity to combine my new personal project (photographing the sunset and sky over our home) with my love of fireworks.

Since we live outside city limits, there are less restrictions on the types of fireworks that can be set off by the general public. This, combined with very few trees surrounding our home, gives us almost our own show every night, as our neighbors light up the skies during the week of July 4th

While photographing the fireworks, I realized I wanted to create a final image that captured the excitement of the night. So, after photographing the fireworks for about an hour, I culled all my images to combine them into 1.

I looked for a few things while deciding which fireworks images to use.

1. Clean and full fireworks images.The bigger and brighter, the better

2. Fireworks that had lots of color. There were so many colors, I wanted to capture as many as I could.

3. Similar backgrounds between images. I photographed these fireworks over the course of an hour and the evening sky changed quite a bit during that time. Stacking the images on top of each other and blending them together would be much easier if the shades of blue behind them were similar.

In the end, I took 4 images of fireworks and, one at a time, made sure the edited images matched in exposure, contrast and white balance. Then, I picked 1 main image, and snipped the firework image out of the other 3 images.

I layered those snipped images into the 1 main image, moving them around to pick the best blend of background and allow each firework to stand out on it’s own as much as possible. Finally, I cleaned up and blended the areas of fireworks, as well as the sky behind them.

After 2 solid hours of editing, I finally had the photo I had dreamed in my mind.

Every time I look at this photo, I beam with pride. Fireworks went off all around us last year, constantly, for hours. Loud, bright, colorful…it was so beautiful.

Are there certain moments or memories that fill you with pride, that you’d love documented for all time? Click the button below to send me a message about your favorite memories and let’s chat about how we can work together to capture them for you.

Till next time…