The fundamentals of making great fireworks photos remain the same today as back in the film days when I made this shot on Dec 31, 1999 with my trusty Sigma 17-35 F2.8-4.0 Ultrawide zoom on a Canon EOS A2 loaded with Kodak Vericolor ISO 100 film. I had originally set myself up on the boardwalk above the sand, but as more and more people showed up, there was serious bounce in the boards, so I moved to the sand instead. Looking at the stillness of the silhouetted people in the frame, you can tell these were a lot of rockets launched at the same time, with a relatively short (1-2 second) exposure.