Summer Fun # 9 ~ Sparkler Fun!

I don't know about you all, but I have always been curious about how you take those neat pictures where you write words with sparklers.  It looked like it must be so complicated.  Luckily, thanks to Pinterest, I found out it could actually be quite simple with the right camera.  If your camera is like ours, it will have a setting under manual mode where you change the shutter speed.  If you want to take pictures of fast action shots like sports, you will want a fast shutter speed.  If you want those cool pictures of running water and waterfalls where the water just looks smooth, you want a slower shutter speed.  Apparently, you also want a slow shutter speed for cool fireworks pictures too.  If you go down as low as you can on the shutter speed option, you will get to a setting called "BULB."  I don't really understand it, but that's where you need to be for these cool sparkler pictures.  When you want to photograph someone writing a word with a sparkler, you press and hold the shutter button until the person finishes writing the word.  And viola, when you release the shutter button, the word will magically and beautifully appear on your screen!  For a more detailed explanation, you can check out this pin.  Here's what we captured on our first try:

Just some fun squiggles to start with.  Brody was back there behind me so I was a little nervous about him getting too close.

Some more fancy swirls.

Then, I wrote Evan's name.  His was the easiest.  I actually wrote his name from left to right for me, but it was backwards on the camera.  No problem.  I just reversed it on the computer.  

Then, I captured Brody's name.  I do love the way their names look written in the night sky. 

And of course, Mattie's name.  Her's was probably the hardest to write.  Crossing t's and dotting i's can be tricky.  

For some reason, I could never get my "love" to show up well so Eddie did this one.  I actually did the heart though so I joined them together.  

Brody and Evan made some squiggles together.  Brody is on the left, and Evan is on the right. 

I am so glad we are finally learning some valuable photography lessons with our camera.  I really want to go visit some waterfalls now and see if we can get some of those cool shots!