With the 4th of July quickly approaching, Americans are preparing their grills, beer, flags, and fireworks for the celebration. I would also recommend charging the batteries for the digital camera as capturing fireworks can be very rewarding.

For non-SLR shooters, taking such a shot will require you to be able to manually control settings on your camera — something that is available in most digital cameras. The two most important elements in my experience are exposure and stability. To properly capture fireworks, you want the exposure (the length of time the shutter is open and the camera is taking the photo) to last as long as it takes the fireworks to burst. Therefore, try different exposure settings, probable between 1-3 seconds (your average photo is taken at fractions of a second).

With a long exposure, stability becomes a must. Any little movement such as the slight shaking of your hand when you press the shoot/shutter button will cause blurriness. To resolve this use a tripod or place the camera on a solid surface. This will ensure that as the shutter opens up for those few magical seconds, the camera remains stable while the action around it, namely the fireworks, paints a moving picture. To avoid shaking the camera when taking the photo, you should consider a remote control or remote release mechanism. I picked up my remote control a while ago and it has been very helpful in taking not only long exposure shots, but also allowing me to place myself in shots.

A good source for this and other photography tips is The Digital Photography School.

If you are like me and you’ve always wanted to see your photos in National Geographic Magazine, then head over to Your Shot on the NGM website.

Users are invited to submit a photo each month based on a theme chosen by the editors (this month’s theme is “Pets”). The editors will then choose from the first 5,000 photos submitted each month. The winner will see their photo both online and in the magazine.

Link: National Geographic Your Shot