Taking Fireworks Pictures

So the first step is staking out a spot in the park or wherever that will give you the best vantage point.
Last year, at Central Park in Roseville, we and several hundred others were faked out by the show being on the other side of the park!  Oh well, not all was lost and I will tell you why:
It is better if you have a frame of reference in these shots.  For the above picture, it was trees.
The year before, it was buildings near downtown Minneapolis:

Maybe not the most ideal scenery but believe me, it's better than no surroundings.
Ok, the setup:

• Use a tripod.  Do not even try it without.
• If you can, auto-focus on a very distant object otherwise just set your focus to infinity and change from autofocus to manual and leave it there.
• Set your camera to manual shutter and aperture.
• Aperture f/11, to darken the sky.  You can go smaller to experiment (higher 'f' number) but probably no more than f/16.
• Shutter 4 seconds.
• ISO100 or 200
• Auto ISO off.
• Flash off

So now the key is to minimize vibration as much as possible when you press the shutter button.  It can be difficult, maybe try the eraser end of a pencil.  I have a remote control gizmo so it's not a problem for me, but this can be a challenge.
Practice makes perfect:  I open the shutter when the rocket is most of the way up.  With a 4 second shutter, you will more often than not catch all the trails like in the above shots.

You can check out my shots from last year here.  Hold your mouse over an image and click the "I" icon to see what the camera settings were.

Good shooting!