The Town of Monroe, NY outdid itself with the firework show they put out for the 250th Independence Day. I went to Millpond with my son and his friends. We arrived just in time, when the fireworks started. The park was packed with people. I brought my camera with me and started taking pictures of the fireworks.
First, I started with using a half-a-second exposure. I didn’t bring my tripod and had to hold the camera as steady I as could. The results were not good, because to trace the light and colors of the fireworks, the exposure on the sensor needs a longer exposure, of at least 1 and 1/3 of a second. This exposure time also depends of how far away you are from the fireworks and what type of lens you are using.
With an extended exposure, immobilizing the camera is crucial to eliminate motion blur. Since I didn’t bring a tripod, I could only rely on how steady my hands could be. To keep a picture sharp, without motion blur, the rule of thumb is that the longest exposure should be the inverse of the lens’ focal length. So, if I was using a 24-120 mm at 37mm, the maximum exposure should have been 1/37th of a second. Here I was shooting for a whole second … The results were OK, although I could see the blur on the bottom of my images (as you can see above.)
However, I wanted a longer exposure, to capture better the movement of the fireworks. So, I decided to shoot just a little bit longer, with exposures of 1.6 seconds. As you can see above, the motion blur is more noticeable.
For this, I kept my arms closer to my body, held my breath, and shoot the pictures. It is one of these images, above, that I decided to choose as my picture of the month for July 2026. The pond’s border has little blur, and the people at the bottom of the images have some ‘ghosting’ from their movement. That part I like, it gives some life to the image.
A second runner among the pictures I was considering is the image above. There is some movement blur at the bottom, but the fireworks look amazing.
The fireworks blasted for about 20 minutes. The people at Millpond were happy and left feeling that they had been part of a really good show. That’s how we felt.
Happy 4th of July!
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