Fireworks Experiments

For the past few years, I have taken myself and my Canon to the trail bridge and done my best to photograph the fireworks beyond townhall. 

The photos turned out well, but last year I determined that I wouldn't do that again because the mosquitoes were ferocious, and also my photos seemed to be getting worse every year instead of better. I vowed to return to shooting from our bedroom with the daycare centre in the background. I had photographed them that way for a couple of years before I decided to shoot from the bridge with townhall in the frame, as above. The original daycare photos had worked before as you can see below.

Canon photo from my bedroom in 2023

I wondered if I were to shoot from the bedroom again, if I might be able to take the fireworks from the bedroom photo and superimpose them onto another scene. So I took some current daylight phone photos when we were out for a walk to bring home and experiment.

phone photo 2026

Obviously I had to darken the photo to emulate night, and then I composited the daycare photo shown above. It works pretty well although when I export to Blogger the photos lose some resolution and become darker.

merging 2023 fireworks with current photo after darkening the latter

Next is another composite looking toward town hall. I figure that there should be a reflection on the river, but I am not artistic, and I don't what it should look like although I made an effort.

The above photos looked to the main bridge from the trail bridge. Then, I turned about and shot toward the back bridge. In real life there wouldn't be fireworks over that way, but in the digital world, I can make my own reality. I made a different sort of guess with the reflection. (I am not using AI for these composites btw.)

Here's one more bit of alternate reality. I turned to face away from the river and along the trail bridge. Once again, I made a choice about reflections, thinking that the pavement would pick up something. I am just flying by the seat of my pants as it were.

Whatever we think about the reflections, I was pleased to more or less complete the vision that I had in my head. To wit: I composited several 2023 firework photos with several 2026 daylight phone photos, and I think the results look fairly realsitc.