More Information
Download
a Pdf here for the contents of this downloadble video tutorial + Tips for shooting
fireworks
Guy
Fawkes night is a great time of year to grab our fireworks pictures, but there
are also many other events all through the year where fireworks play a large part
of the entertainment.
We are all attracted
to the power and beauty of the fireworks bursting in the night sky, but is that
enough to provide us with a powerful picture. In our film days we could use tricks
like multiple exposures on one frame of film and with a dozen fireworks bursting
in the sky together
the image was usually more impressive.
We
can use those same multi-exposure techniques in photoshop, but we just need to
go about it in a slightly different way. The results are the same, in fact better
because we can place the fireworks just where we want them. In this tutorial we
take the basic night shot of Parliament and first carry out a few adjustments.
We straighten the verticals and get rid of that wicked lean of the two towers.
We then fix the burnt out and over-exposed clock face and those changes provide
us with our blank canvas for the main attraction.
We
also need much more sky in this image for the fireworks to burst and we demonstrate
a couple of neat tricks that enable us to do this without too much effort. We
add extra clouds and the dark area on top of the clouds to give ourselves the
height we need.
Then comes the fun part
of bringing into our image as many fireworks as we like. Layers and layer blend
modes and one or two other tips and tricks ensure the fireworks can be placed
with the minimum amount of work. The fireworks don’t have to be perfect and
before long we have an image with bags of impact.
We
also demonstrate how we can create the streaks of the rockets as they climb into
the air and give them any curve or shape we want. Fireworks are a great subject
and these days our cameras automatic exposure often does a great job.
Try
to use a tripod if you can, but if not, push up the film speed a little and hand
hold. Take enough shots and you will still get many useable ones that you can
use in a project like this.
We can make
use of any night shot we have that may contain some detail or a building in the
foreground or just create a night sky using just the tools of 
Photoshop.
For example, try making a gradient on a new canvas that is black at the top and
royal blue at the base and position your fireworks on that. You will see from
our example below that the final image is impressive even when we create the sky
ourselves.
The files we used for this
image are available to you and a link will be included in an email confirmation
that is sent to you. You can download the files from that link. Please note that
copyright of these images remains with Beckham Digital and we offer them to allow
you to follow our tutorial only. Thankyou.
Take
a look at our finished image at a much higher resolution HERE
However, do not evaluate the image in your browser, right click the image and
select save picture as. Save it to your PC and view the image in Photoshop
