So excited to be going into a weekend of holiday fun!  The above photo is a fun cake my teenager made last year.  You can find the recipe here if you are feeling especially creative in the baking department.   I love the 4th of July – so many great memories… I can't wait to make more this weekend!  

So many things I'd love to share with you today to help you celebrate, but I will keep this post simple. There are a lot of great posts in blog land about capturing fireworks.  Rather than add to the fray, I thought I would focus on sparklers, one of our family's favorite 4th of July traditions. 

I need to preface this information with a disclaimer: Sparklers can be very dangerous – so please read this safety information before allowing your children to use them. 

Sparklers are paintbrushes of light – and if you time it right and play with your camera settings, you really can capture some cool shots -

I love this shot of my daughter Grace just having fun – she looks like a butterfly.  The settings on my camera were:

• Shutter Speed: 2.0 seconds
• Aperture: F/6.3
• ISO 400
• Zoom: 24mm
• Mode: Shutter Priority

Now what does that all mean?  The first thing you will want to know is the mode of my camera – I had the dial set to TV or Shutter Priority.

Above you may note that I shared the technical details of my photo with the shutter speed in seconds.  However, when you  adjust your shutter speed on your camera screen, it never says "2 seconds"  it gives you a shorter display like 1/100, 1/60 or 1/30.  When you really slow things down to one second or more you'll see two small lines next to the shutter speed like 2".  

Forgive the quality of the above iPhone photo, but it will give you an idea.  To sum it up, 1/100 is like 100 and is faster the 1/30 (or 30); both are faster than 30".  If you see a number followed by " that is the shutter speed in seconds.

My advice to you is to set your camera in shutter priority mode this weekend and play with shutter speeds to see what you can come up with.  A tripod is extremly helpful if you want sharper shots but in a pinch you could use a patio table, stool, etc.

Here are a few more examples:

• Shutter Speed: 2.5 seconds (2"5 on camera settings screen)
• Aperture: F/9
• ISO 400
• Zoom: 24mm
• Mode: Shutter Priority

• Shutter Speed: 4.0 seconds (4" on camera settings screen)
• Aperture: F/13
• ISO 400
• Zoom: 34mm
• Mode: Shutter Priority

So get out this weekend and have some fun with your camera – whatever you do we'd love to see your images of holiday fun here.  (No sparklers or fireworks necessary!)