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Well, I wish I had better news. My second try at fireworks photography did not go as well as my first, even though I lugged two 5D Mark II’s, a Rebel T1i, six lenses, and three tripods for what felt like ten miles up, down, and around the USS Midway for six hours on the 4th of July.

I was completely prepared and knew exactly what I needed to do to capture great pictures, but three things got in my way: clouds, smoke, and people. Fog started coming in as soon as it got dark and so the fireworks were exploding inside a bank of haze that was impossible for the camera to penetrate. I tried things like increasing the f-stop to 22 so as to capture as little surrounding light as possible, but to little avail. Second, there must have been five hundred fireworks going off every minute from nine different locations around the bay, so the fog was compounded by an impregnable layer of smoke that never blew away. Third, I had a great location to shoot the fireworks but at the last minute decided to move because I was standing in people’s way, and that proved disastrous. Most of my pictures have a line of heads along the bottom that obstruct the lower reaches of the fireworks. Oh well.

I took over 400 pictures in six hours, and less that 20 are worth editing. Like last time, here are the first four.

Most of the time the smoke was a nuisance, but sometimes it added to the composition.

Those fireworks with exploding bulbs make for interesting pictures.

Brief moments of clarity and a lot of Photoshopping produced some smokeless images. Notice the Coronado Bridge at the bottom of the next two pictures.