4th of July Fireworks - Queen Mary

On this Fourth of July, I went to Long Beach, California, to shoot the fireworks show at the Queen Mary.

Shooting fireworks can be tricky, but it really isn’t that hard. Shooting with a fairly stopped-down aperture and a slow shutter speed is important. Most of these photos were shot at around an f/16 with a shutter between 10-30 seconds. I also shot with bracketing of 3 photos at two stops for these photos. The camera was set to aperture priority. This gave me three shots, all with slightly different shutter speeds, for more variety.

Fourth of July at the Queen Mary with Fireworks.

Camera used: Canon 5Dmkii

Lens: Canon 70-200 F2.8L IS II

ISO: 200

All the photos were shot at 70mm on the lens. The vertical shots were cropped in.

Alik Griffin

A professional video editor, and photographer with a Bachelors in Film studies from UCSD. Based in Los Angeles, I have created commercials, trailers, and other video content for various clients and platforms since 2005. I also love to write about my passions and share my insights on my blog.