Sparkler photos for the 4th of July

My dear friend Catherine came over to my house in Tempe and we took these photos of her a few days before the 4th of July. I love sparklers and every year I make a point to get photos of friends with sparklers. The whole week before the 4th of July, I had different friends come over and I took pictures each night right before it got dark. It was so much fun and I plan to do it again in 2022, so if we are friends and you would like photos with sparklers, let me know! You’ll not just get sparklers photos when you come to my house, you’ll get ice cream too!

I hung up seamless background paper that I bought from Savage Universal online and then hung up banner fringe that I got from Party City. I wish I had thought to iron out the wrinkles somehow. I will do that next time, though I am not sure how! I used the banner fringe in front of my lens to get the effect that you will see when you scroll through the photos. I love this effect soooo much and see photographers doing it a lot with trees and flowers. I even see photo journalists doing it to make images more interesting. I don’t know if there is a name for it! I need to find out. The first thing that comes to mind is that it is the bokeh effect, but it’s not only that…so is there a particular name for it?

There is such a learning curve to taking photos with sparklers, and I feel like I learn a little more every time I take photos with sparklers. Here are some of my tips:

1. Make sure you have a bucket of water nearby for people to put sparklers in when they no longer want to hold them. If you have a garden hose, keep that nearby and ready to use if any sparks go astray. I’ve never needed to use my garden hose, but it was good to have it close by, just in case.

2. Use a lens with the widest aperture that you can. F2.8 or less is great to use, if you have that kind of lens. I love my Canon L 1.2 mm and I used that for this photo shoot. You could rent a lens, if you need one with a wider aperture.

3. A lot of times when you do a photo shoot, you want the hour or two before sunset for the perfect golden light. For sparkler photos, you will get a few minutes, maybe 10-15 minutes where the light will be perfect for sparklers. Goldilocks light - when it’s not too light and not too dark. Start paying attention in the week before you shoot to find out when those minutes will be. For me, in July, in Arizona, that time arrived at about 7:20/7:30 PM and was gone about 10-20 minutes later.

4. If you need more than ~20 minutes of perfect light, consider using continuous lighting. I didn’t for this shoot, but in the future I might rent lighting from LensProToGo. They don’t just rent lenses, they rent pretty much anything a photographer could need, at prices that are easier than other places I have rented from.

5. As with a lot of portrait photography, getting a little higher than your subjects can be helpful, but I feel it’s especially helpful with sparkler photos. I had a step ladder that I stood on to make taking photos a little easier.

6. Lighting sparklers is kind of tedious, so by the third night of shooting photos, I put some candles in mason jars and used them to light the sparklers instead of lighters or matches. That made it a little bit easier.

Allyson + family at the Queen Creek Wash

I keep thinking about how the Summer of 2021 is upon us, and how this summer will be different than last summer. I will sit outside at restaurants, I’ve got that Pfizer vaccine, so I won’t feel afraid of doing photo shoots, I hope to start playing ultimate Frisbee again. I’ve been making a Summer of 2021 Spotify playlist (Perfume Genius’s “On the Floor” and “imma” by bbno$ & Lentra are the first two songs on there, if you were wondering and I always welcome hearing what other people are listening to) and I feel like I want to go out and experience all the things I couldn’t do last summer. One thing I would really like to do is meet up with other photographers and talk shop.

Something that I have always wanted to do in our hot summer months is portraits of people at the Salt River. Last summer, my sister and my nephew and I went exploring for places to take portraits and we found some beautiful spots. So that is one of my plans!

These photos are of Allyson and her husband and their children from September 2020. The first photo shoot I did for Allyson was in 2011 when her daughter was just a toddler baby, so it’s been fun to see her family grow. We all met up at the Queen Creek Wash and when I got there I was a little freaked out to see there was actually water running in the wash. I had never seen that all the times I have been there. It limited the places we could go for photos, but it turned out quite all right! After we got some family photos, the kids and their parents got to cool off in the water. And I did too. Which was fantastic, because it was a very hot-in-the-hundreds Arizona day.

That’s one of the reasons I want to do a photo shoot at the Salt River. We can all get in the water to cool off! And while I’m talking about plans, I will also share that I plan to do swimming pool photo shoots later this summer with my GoPro. You and your kids can get in the pool and swim underwater and I will take photos. These photos will be documentary style images, not the usual portraits I take.

I will be posting dates on Facebook and Instagram for those water photo shoots and you can also sign up for my email newsletter to be the first to find out about photo shoot dates.

Rebecca at Agritopia

Agritopia in Gilbert, Arizona has a few restaurants, shops, lots of outdoor seating, community gardens, a farmers market, farm tours, pretty paths to explore, tons of trees, seasonal events like citrus picking, and the cutest coffee shop (that sells cupcakes with edible glitter) plus so much else.

When Agritopia first opened to the public over ten years ago, they didn’t advertise very much and word hadn’t gotten out. I would take my dad there and we were amazed to have this beautiful place almost all to ourselves. I did some of my very first photo shoots there of my friends Annie and Aaron and their two kids, and also of my friends Kelly and Bill and their kiddo. Annie and Aaron’s photo shoot was on a hot summer night that cooled off at the end of the evening because a dust storm monsoon blew through and rained down on us. It was so much fun to go get ice cream afterwards at Joe’s Farm Grill - they make the best shakes! Kelly and Bill’s photo shoot was especially beautiful because the grape vines were in full bloom and made for a gorgeous background. And for each photo shoot, we had the place pretty much all to ourselves.

I got to experience having the place (almost) all to myself when I went there with my sister and nephew early in the pandemic. We got curbside pickup and found a place to sit outside and eat away from other people, picnic-style.

Agritopia makes their citrus and peach orchards available to photographers a few times a year with the purchase of a permit. I love having access to the orchard for photo sessions because the orchards are so beautiful. The grass there is the clover kind - tall and lush. I regularly schedule summer and fall/winter/holiday photo sessions there.

These images are of Rebecca. She met up with me to get portraits created at the beginning of summer early in the morning. I love how summery these photos look. We wandered around the Agritopia grounds for a bit, getting photos in front of their magnificent flowering cactus and then headed to the orchard. Thanks, Rebecca for having me take photos of you at the Agritopia orchard. I love how they turned out!

I will most likely be doing more Agritopia summer portraits, probably at the very end of May and beginning of June 2021. If you are interested in getting photos then, please contact me!

Are you looking for a photographer so that you can get photos at Agritopia? All year long photographers and their clients can walk around Agritopia to get photos, after buying a location permit. Agritopia also gives photographers a chance to purchase permits to photograph in their peach orchards. Those are usually available in September, October, and November and sometimes in the spring. Permits for the pink peach blossoms are available in February. Some years permits are available for the sunflower fields.

Fill out this form if you would like me to photograph you at Agritopia!

Murals in Phoenix

I absolutely love the arts district of downtown Phoenix, known as Roosevelt Row, as a location for photos. Perfect for high school seniors, maternity, family portraits, birthdays photo shoots, kids, couples/engagement sessions.