Have you ever tried to take photos of fireworks? I have. It's never worked, even though I am able to take good pictures of other things (mostly, food.) Usually they come out looking something like this:



Luckily just in time for the 4th of July I found these 10 handy tips for photographing fireworks at the simplehuman blog so yours can come out more like this:



Some of the best tips from the list are:

Use a tripod to ensure camera shakes don't blur your photos (which will most likely be taken with longer exposure).

To get the cleanest shot possible, shoot at a low ISO (around 100).

Off with your flash! Shooting with your flash on "tricks" your camera into shortening the exposure time.

Shoot in manual mode. Once you have your focus set, you really don't need to change it during the fireworks show. So, get a solid setting and stick to it instead of letting your camera reconfigure automatically per shot.

See the whole list at simplehuman. Happy shooting (photos, I mean, happy shooting photos) and happy 4th of July!