Growing up, my favorite firework was always SPARKLERS! There is a lot of fun to be had with sparklers, and there are some really fun things you can do with sparklers and photography to capture some Fourth of July memories. This year my family decided to try it out.
What you need:
- sparklers (we bought the extended “kid friendly” version for our daughter)
- lighter
- camera (DSLR)
- tripod
Even if you feel uncomfortable with using manual settings on your camera, don’t get discouraged, this is pretty simple.
First, set your camera to manual and use the following settings.
White Balance: auto
ISO: 100
Aperture: 16
Shutter Speed: varies with the light (at dusk we started with a 1 second shutter speed, then by the time it was dark we could use a shutter speed of 10-13 seconds)
Once we were ready, our camera was on the tripod, the settings were set, we lit the sparkler, and started taking pictures.
WB: auto – ISO:100 – Aperture:16 – Shutter Speed: 1 second
Our daughter is a little too young to experiment with sparklers on her own, so we made sure to have an adult by her side at all times.
WB: auto – ISO:100 – Aperture:16 – Shutter Speed: 2 seconds
Once you get more comfortable with moving the sparkler and how it’s going to look in the picture, you can start getting creative.
WB: auto – ISO:100 – Aperture:16 – Shutter Speed: 10-13 seconds
Once night falls and you increase your shutter speed, you can get more creative, because you have longer to create your image. We tried spelling names and words and it’s actually pretty tricky to think and write the words “backwards”, so they appear correct in the image.
Grab your camera, get creative and have fun!
*This post was originally written in 2015
