Avoid these mistakes to take epic photos of fireworks this New Year’s Eve

The countdown to 2025 is one, so you may be wondering how to take photos of fireworks on a phone to capture the moment at midnight. Fireworks are a part of New Year’s Eve celebrations in many places, but people are often disappointed that their photos don’t look as impressive as they hoped.

The good news is that whether you’re watching a massive display like the London fireworks on the Thames or a more humble affair in your neighbour’s garden, there are a few things you can do to get better fireworks shots and avoid blurred, low-contrast images – even on a smartphone (see our pick of the best camera phones for creatives if you need a new device).

As with most kinds of photography, one of the most common mistakes people make is not thinking about the composition, and this is really the key to a great shot. Like astro shots of starry skies, photos of even the most impressive fireworks often disappoint if there’s nothing else in the composition. Without other elements to provide context, all you have are some sparks in the sky, which isn’t really very interesting to look at because it could be anywhere. Finding a location where you can frame a shot to include buildings, landscape or people in the foreground can result in a much more impressive image.

For smartphone photography, many of us use automatic settings. These can be fine for taking quick shots of everyday scenes, but they can let us down when it comes to taking shots at night, and particularly of fireworks. The problem is that the camera will often try to expose for the dark sky, making the image too bright, with insufficient contrast to see the fireworks clearly. You’re phone may also take an exposure that’s too long, leading to blurry fireworks.

If you’re using a full manual settings (or a camera rather than a phone), I would recommend an aperture of around f/8, base ISO and a shutter speed of 10 to 20 seconds depending on the scene. If you want to keep things simple, the easiest adjustment you can make to quickly improve fireworks photos is to lower the exposure, darkening the image. Simply tap your phone screen and drag the light meter down.

Also make sure you don’t have HDR enabled. This may sound counter intuitive since HDR is designed precisely for the purpose of capturing high-contrast scenes. The problem is that it works by taking multiple shots and then patching them together. Fireworks are a moving subject, which means they will often turn out blurred in an in-camera automatic HDR composite. You may also find that the background is made too bright.

You’ll want a tripod to keep your phone or camera steady (and ideally use a remote shutter release). Take one photo of the composition before the fireworks start (or after they finish) with a longer exposure time to correctly expose for foreground elements. Then take photographs of the fireworks with the exposure adjusted as necessary. You can then use your original photo for the background and put the fireworks on top as a layer in Photoshop or as an HDR image in Lightroom.

If you have the time to try out different things, fireworks provide a great opportunity to experiment with creative photography. You could try taking long exposures to capture light trails. This can be particularly effective with sparklers, allowing your subject to draw images in the air with light. You could also try capturing long exposures as fireworks explode, capturing the trails that form as sparks fall.

Since fireworks don’t have a correct colour as such, you can play with white balance and hue and saturation as you wish. Increasing the saturation may make the fireworks look more impressive, but try to ensure any colours in the foreground or background remain realistic. If you use Lightroom, the ‘Dehaze’ control can be useful if you want to reduce the appearance of smoke or clouds in the scene.