Ken Papaleo: X Marks the Shot: July 4th fireworks show, Aurora, Colorado.

"X Shot" information.

Camera - Canon EOS 5D Mark II

ISO - 200

Shutter - 11 seconds

F/stop - 18

Lens - 70/200 zoom.

Note - tripod, cable release and a piece of black foam-board were used for this shoot.

CHALLENGE.

I was hired to photograph Aurora's July 4th fireworks show. I had done some work for this city in the past but not this show. The challenge would be to get a real knock-out shot.

SOLUTION.

The first thing that had to be done was go to the fireworks area and find a good location to shoot from.

In this situation, the spot was going to be on the roof of the Aurora Municipal Building. Get in position and be ready to shoot early! My set up was a 70/200 zoom on a tripod, using a cable release. ISO of 200, starting with a f/stop of 8. My shutter was set at bulb and my first shots were around 3 seconds.

This gave me a nice image but I wanted more. More explosions, more color and long drawn out lines of light. To do this I changed my f/stop to 18 and held the shutter open for 11 seconds. Normally this would cause some over-exposure in your image. The trick to prevent this is to use a black piece of foam board. First thing is to take off any lens-hood. Now during the 11 second exposure, block the lens with the board, between explosions, during the launch time and remove it just before bursts of color and keep it off until the light disappears. Repeat this a number of times. Make sure you take your camera off auto-focus and than manually focus on the first bursts and than leave it alone. Move your zoom in and out during the show, this will give you a little different look in some of your photos .

More shots from the fireworks show, which was to music and great!!