Mixed light, mixed feelings
Happy New Year.
I’ll start with a confession: I really dislike fireworks. Not the light itself, but everything around it. The pollution, the stress for animals, the damage to nature, and the yearly ritual of people discovering—once again—that playing with controlled explosions has consequences. Every year the harm increases, and every year we collectively act surprised.
So no, you won’t see me buying fireworks or lighting them myself.
But… I do photograph them.
Because once they are already in the sky, they become something else entirely. Brief, chaotic chemical experiments unfolding against a dark background. This image was taken handheld with my Canon 5D Mark IV and the Sigma 100–400, using a 1.6-second exposure at ISO 100. Long enough to let the explosion draw itself, short enough to keep structure and definition.
What fascinates me most is the physics and chemistry behind the colors. Yellow from sodium, red from strontium, and that elusive blue—one of the hardest colors to produce reliably in fireworks—created by copper compounds under very specific temperatures. Add bright white sparks, often magnesium or aluminum, and suddenly the sky looks less like a celebration and more like a fleeting nebula.
If you look closely, it almost resembles deep-space imagery: expanding clouds, glowing particles, tiny star-like points suspended in darkness. A reminder that the same physical laws govern both fireworks above our cities and stellar explosions light-years away.
I don’t celebrate the noise or the damage. But I do observe the light—brief, beautiful, and already fading.
#fireworksphotography #longexposure #nightphotography #scienceandart
#physicsinmotion #chemicalcolors #handheldphotography
#nightSkyVibes #urbanastronomy #photographicexperiment
#Canon5DMarkIV #Sigma100400
#NewYearsLight #mixedfeelings
#climateawareness #naturefirst
#PixelfedPhotography #Pixelfed
#WonderingLens
#ByMaikeldeBakker #MaikeldeBakkerPhotography
Neural
Maikel de Bakker
apertureonepointfour
Víctor
