Here’s a link to a blog called “Digital Photography School” and its recent posting on how to shoot photographs of fireworks. Shout-out to my colleague Kim Bell for the great idea, with July Fourth two days away and plenty of pixels likely to be wasted without some schooling like this.

Some of the tips might be obvious to regular photographers. But I’m not a pro, so stuff like this is helpful, under the section called “Focal Length?”

One of the hardest parts of photographing fireworks is having your camera trained on the right part of the sky at the right time. This is especially difficult if you’re shooting with a longer focal length and are trying to take more tightly cropped shots. I generally shoot at a wider focal length than a tight one but during a show will try a few tighter shots (I usually use a zoom lens to give me this option) to see if I can get lucky with them.

I thought you might appreciate a link to Flickr with examples of photos St. Louisans posted since last year’s Fourth of July (thanks to herkie for coaching me on the search). There’s about 72 500 photos of fireworks in this slideshow (some by people who apparently already know what they’re doing!).

And, a quick reminder: We would love to see and share your fireworks pictures — and other activities from the long weekend — in our July Fourth 2008 IWitness album posted over here. We’ve already got some shots in there.

Oh, and that picture up top here? That’s from the 2007 fireworks at the Arch by former Post-Dispatch photographer Odell Mitchell.