Fireworks and More

Meredith saw this pin

How to Photograph Your Name in Sparklers


here is another article that had some good tips also.

 My two tips -

1.  I set my camera to a single self-timer shot with a 2 second delay start.  This allowed me to depress the button and get my hand off the camera in time for the picture to be taken.  We sure didn't want any shake with the slow shutter speed

2.  It is dark and the camera cannot find anything to focus.  Have the person hold the lit sparkler in right  front of their body.  This allows the camera to focus.


She bought 4 long sparklers and we went to work. I set up my camera and had the setting correct, or at least I thought.  You see I had my camera correct for dusk, with still decent light.  That all changed in the dark of night!

Here is "HI"

The tricky part is not only getting the shutter speed slow enough but you have to write your word  BACKWARDS.  

Here is the incorrect shutter speed and very quick photo.  Meredith had only written a bit of a letter.

Some squiggles

Another one but the spelling a bit off!

The final sparkler and the final picture, I finally had the camera set just right.   Meredith had about 30 seconds with the sparkler but she doubted my camera set-up skills. She was just squiggling with the sparkler and see that burst of color in the right corner.  Meredith just twirled the sparkler in a circle for quite a bit of the time.  

So if you have leftover sparklers, this is very fun to do.  We will be buying more sparkles to try this again and I have my camera settings written down to recreate.

I had shutter at 1/5, f -stop at 4.0 and ISO at 200, but might turn it to 100 and see if the background darkens a bit.

I am taking a few days off from blogging.  I have this week off from work and we are planning many activities.  So see you later.