Brisbane Riverfire 2025 Part 2 - Fireworks

photography city night fireworks

We got to see some fireworks. Quite a few of them too.

Make sure to check out part 1 (airshow) if you missed it!


I'd never really taken pictures of fireworks before, so I did a quick search of tips beforehand. Nothing really surprised me (low ISO and small aperture so you can do long exposure), but a useful tip was use bulb mode to manually time the exposures.

I took my battery grip (which has a remote) so that I could remotely open and close the shutter without blurring. Being able to manually open and close meant I could shorten or lengthen my exposures on the fly based off how many fireworks had gone off - e.g. if there was a gap in fireworks I just let it expose longer, but if a lot came out in quick succession I stopped exposing sooner. I could also hear fireworks being launched and use that as a cue to start exposing.

See the bottom for details but I basically used ISO64, f/8-f/11 and manual shutter for most of these.

Fireworks!

From where I was located I could see fireworks North, in front of the city, or South from a lone barge. The city ones were pretty spectacular (36mm, 15.6s). city

I did a "HDR" style edit (pumped the shadows way up - same photo as above) so you can see some of the other spectators in the corner. Bringing the shadows up gives you less space to show off the fireworks though so they don't look as nice. city

(50mm, 8.8s). city

I love the sound these "cluster" fireworks make when the go off (70mm, 8.1s). city

You can see I started the exposure when some were already going off (trails start in mid-air) (70mm, 12.9s). city

(70mm, 9.8s). city

And facing the lone firework barge. It was a bit closer and better suited to portrait shots (although you can see leaves from a tree slightly in the way) (35mm, 10.2s). boat

And more, closed down to f/11 now to reduce overexposure (40mm, 4.5s). boat

Post Fireworks

I turned straight back to the city as soon as they finished to capture the smoke hanging over the city (50mm, f/8, 10s). city

I realised I hadn't used my 70-200mm yet, so I tried out a few night shots of the city with it. I had fun syncing up my exposure so that I'd capture both the red and blue light from the police boat (fore-left). They were never on simultaneously but with a 1/2s exposure I could get both. (95mm, f/4, 1/2s, ISO 250). city

And that's it for now! I've got a couple more night shots I might add to this post if I edit them, otherwise I'm thinking my next post will be a Riverfire prologue (some nice shots I got before the planes showed up).


If you want a high resolution version (usually up to 8k) of any of these shots for personal or commercial use, reach out to me and we can work something out.

How I did it

Location

Same place as Part 1.

Gear

Nikon D850 + Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 G2 + Battery Grip (has a remote control which makes bulb mode easy).

I also used the Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 G2 for that shot at the end to justify lugging it around with me.

General settings

  • Bulb mode (manual exposure durations from ~5s to ~15s), usually f/8 to f/11, ISO64
  • AF and Exposure mode N/A
  • Shot in raw and edited with Affinity Photo

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