Fireworks in Highlands Ranch, CO.

If there’s one thing that everyone expects on the Fourth of July, it’s fireworks!

The last post was all about our neighborhood’s festivities on July 4th.  These included a parade, bike-decorating contest, cookies, and the Fire Department hosing down the neighborhood kids (and a couple adults) at full force  from the top of a ladder truck!

Sadly, though, it was all over by 11am.  But, not to worry – we were invited to visit our friend Dave and his family for dinner.  Afterwards, we all went to see the big fireworks show put on by the City of Highlands Ranch.

What a show!

More pics, after the jump…

These are all composites of 4 or 5 frames that were layered and combined in Photoshop.  Individual frames were 20-25 seconds at f/11-f/16.  Because I was using a wide-angle lens and we were some distance away, I thought it looked better to combine several bursts in one frame.  As for how to combine these, with this kind of subject, it’s actually really easy.  First I selected the frame with the best sky for the background as the “base” image.  After that I opened up the other files I wanted to bring fireworks bursts in from and made a rough selection around the burst with the lasso tool staying fairly close to the edge of the burst.  Float that to it’s own layer with a Cmd+J (Ctrl+J on PC) and then drag that layer to the base image and set the overlay mode to Color Dodge and you’re set.  Add more bursts as desired and repeat.  Bingo!

Hope you enjoy!

click any pic to see it larger…