Ready. Aim. Fire(works)!!!
If ever there was the perfect reason for using Live Photo, it’s to capture the experience of a fireworks display.
Every year about now I remind readers that whatever you love/hate about the Live Photo feature on your iPhone, taking pictures of fireworks is the bone fide, slam dunk best way to get comment-worthy pictures of fireworks in your Photos Library.
And it’s surprisingly easy to do.
Loop Effect
The magic is that when you choose to use Live Photo on the camera app, it starts recording a short snippet of whatever the camera sees. Which means that whenever you trip the shutter button, the app adds 1.5 seconds of saved video from BEFORE you take a shot to the 1.5 seconds AFTER your shot, creating a 3 second video file.
You don’t get that with a camera.
Long Exposure effect
And as luck would have it, 3 seconds is about the length of time that it takes a typical fireworks charge to launch and burst. So by the time we react to a launch and push the camera button, it’s the middle of the explosion and we can get a whole Live Photo of that fireworks display. Since fireworks are really a series of individual displays, your chances of catching several great images are exceptionally good when you take a few Live Photos over the length of the whole show.
So you’ve got the Live Photos, now what?
Well, you get to choose how to share them.
Live Photos offers different effects
Live Photo pictures let you create 3 different effects:
1. Loop - This shares as a 3 second loop of the photo capture. It’s my personal favorite for fireworks in general because it shows a snippet of what I actually saw at the event.
2. Bounce - This is the bounce back or “boomerang” effect that became popular on Instagram. I’m not fond of it for fireworks, but that’s just me. If you like boomerangs, you’ll love bounce.
3. Long Exposure - This effect combines the frames from all 3 seconds to make a blurred still photo of the display. With the right firework this can be beautiful.
What’s great is that because Apple Photos is non-destructive, you can try all 3 effects to find the one you like best with each fireworks display. And if you later decide to change it, you can.
In Edit Mode you can pick your favorite frame as a still image
You can also choose - frame by frame - a still image if you want just a beautiful picture of a particular burst.
So many choices from just one Live Photo.
For full details on how to set up and edit Live Photos for fireworks, Download the free PDF.