I don't shoot firework pictures often, and when I do, I do it differently from how most people do.

There are lots of photos of fireworks -- lots of people take them. But to me, most firework photos don't look like fireworks really look. The typical firework photo's taken with the camera shutter dragging (open a long time) and the result is pretty, but the pyrotechnics look like giant blossoms hanging peacefully in the sky. When I looked at my firework photos shot that way, I always asked myself, "Where's the action?. Where's the dramatic excitement as explosions reverberate in your chest? Why can't I 'smell' the distinctive acrid smoke that drifts over us?" It seemed that short of video, I should be able to create a still that has more sense of the real thing.

So, I created another way and these are some examples of the result. These are more like what I was going for, implying motion, bursting, explosion and haze. For any serious shooters reading this, I don't drag the shutter -- these were shot at ISO 5000, 1/250th of sec f5.0. But, even that doesn't look right as a single frame.  Both images are composites of a series taken quickly -- click, click, click, click, click -- while locked down on a tripod. In Photoshop, I align and  blend them (well, Photoshop blends them -- for these, autoblend works really well), then crop for the finals you see here.

I'll leave it to you whether you like these better, the same or not at all, but at least they're a bit different.