Whether you're taking photos on July 4th, at New Year's or for another celebration, fireworks are always amazing opportunities for photos. The bright lights and vibrant colors contrast incredibly well with the dark night skies, making your photos look beautifully dramatic with very little effort on your part.
While taking photos at night used to be something you'd need a big DSLR for, today's best camera phones, including the iPhone 16 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro and Galaxy S25 Ultra, are capable of taking stunning photos after dark. Even budget options like the Pixel 9A or Nothing Phone 3A can capture great looking images at night.
So whether you're pointing towards the exploding sky with your phone or a mirrorless camera, here are my top tips as a professional photographer on how to take photos of fireworks that are sure to wow your friends.
Try night mode
With most firework displays taking place at night, you're likely going to need to use your phone's night mode to capture a bright image. While some phones, like the iPhone 16 Pro, have night modes that kick in automatically when they detect it's dark enough, other phones might have a dedicated mode for taking photos at night. Before you head out to your show, make sure you know how to turn on night mode on your phone.
Taken with the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, the fireworks aren't exactly spectacular at Taylor Swift's Eras tour, but this shot shows the importance of having more compositional elements in your scene than just some fireworks by themselves. Andrew Lanxon/CNET
Lock the exposure
Night mode is probably going to be the easiest way to get good-looking results with little effort, but it's not foolproof. Its main problem is that it'll try to make the whole scene brighter, and that might not look great -- those dark skies need to remain dark in order for the fireworks themselves to really stand out.
If you find night mode shots looking a bit lacklustre, try pressing and holding on an area of the image to lock the exposure, and then use the slider to darken the image until you think it looks good. By locking the exposure like this it'll stop it resetting back to default after you take each image. If your phone has a pro mode, you can likely set the exposure to a darker point manually.
Get creative with manual controls
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