**Photographing Fireworks with Johnny**

As we watch Johnny set up his camera and prepare to capture the fireworks, he explains that this is his process and not something to be attempted at home. He's an experienced photographer with a seasoned approach to shooting firework displays. His equipment consists of just off-the-shelf sparklers, which are basic in shape but offer some unique characteristics.

The sparklers have three separate areas where they emit sparks, providing more variety than traditional sparklers. They also produce more ground smoke, and Johnny notes that they don't burn as long as regular sparklers. This is a deliberate design choice, as Johnny prefers not to create too showy or explosive effects in his photographs.

When it comes to positioning the fireworks, Johnny has developed techniques for controlling their impact. By placing them in specific locations, he can manipulate the direction and timing of the explosions. He explains that using adhesive to secure the sparklers in place allows him to precisely position them and capture the desired effect.

As Johnny prepares to take a photo, we see him set up his camera to capture ten frames per second. This rapid-fire shooting allows him to freeze the action and create a sense of movement in the images. With each shot, he adjusts the angle and composition to capture the best possible result.

The resulting photographs showcase the fireworks in stunning detail, with each frame revealing a different stage of the explosion. The camera's fast shutter speed enables Johnny to capture the sparklers as they kick up into the air, creating a dramatic effect. He can then scroll through the images to select his favorites and upload them to his computer.

As we watch the photographs being taken, Johnny comments on the importance of cleaning up after the shoot. If it was outside, he'd wash off any debris or dust that had accumulated on the fireworks and equipment. This ensures they're ready for the next photo session. With a final flourish, Johnny wraps up his shoot and prepares to share his stunning photographs with us – Instagram-worthy images that capture the magic of firework displays.

**The Art of Photographing Fireworks**

For Johnny, photographing fireworks is all about capturing the perfect moment. He's developed techniques for controlling the impact of the explosions, using positioning and timing to create a desired effect. By working with compressed air, lights, and sparklers, he can achieve a range of effects – from subtle to dramatic.

One of the key challenges in photographing fireworks is dealing with the smell and sulfur residue that often accompanies them. Johnny has developed ways to clean up these impurities, ensuring his equipment and workspace are safe for future shoots.

As we observe Johnny's process, it becomes clear that he approaches each shoot as a creative endeavor. He's not just capturing the firework display; he's using the sparks, smoke, and light to create a visual narrative. The result is a series of stunning photographs that showcase his skill and artistry.

For those interested in following Johnny's work, Instagram is the perfect platform. He regularly shares his latest photographs, giving fans a glimpse into his creative process and providing inspiration for others who might be interested in trying their hand at photography or pyrotechnics.

**The Importance of Control**

When it comes to photographing fireworks, control is key. Johnny understands that even small variations can make a big difference in the final result. By carefully positioning the sparklers, adjusting timing and direction, and using specialized equipment like compressed air, he's able to achieve a high level of precision.

This attention to detail is what sets professional photographers like Johnny apart from enthusiasts or hobbyists. They know exactly how to use their tools and techniques to create the desired effect – whether that's capturing a dramatic explosion or a subtle, atmospheric image.

As we watch Johnny work his magic, it becomes clear that control is not just about technical skill; it's also about creativity and vision. He knows exactly what he wants to achieve with each shot and uses every trick in the book to get it right.

By mastering the art of controlling firework explosions, photographers like Johnny can create truly unique and memorable images – ones that capture the essence of this ephemeral display and leave a lasting impression on their audience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody norm from tested here we're in our studio this time once again I'm joined by Johnny Sargent bananas welcome to our studio thanks for having me it's really cool now we needed to do more projects with you and we want to learn more about your processes and so we invited you here today to demo another practical effect that we've seen in your photos right your tour photo is a little more explosive this time literally yes you're gonna be doing some fireworks today oh so I've seen in a bunch of your photos you've posed scenes where there are explosions in the background whether with vehicles with characters no real time war scenes yes how you think of them yeah pretty much exactly just like in the heat of battle like explosions going off running through like the trenches that kind of vibe it's it makes the poses that much more bringing life exactly yeah exactly so Johnny you've brought up some figures and you're set up making a miniature studio because that's what you do what we learned last time is you use stuff at eight scale six scale yeah so your lights your loom cube lights are also kind of smaller mm-hmm and it looks like the explosive you're working with are smaller as well yeah yeah it's all shrunken down so I brought this character here this is a samurai snow trooper this line is called the Star Wars movie realization line it's made by tamashii nations it is probably my favorite toy line I've said that um time and time again it something about it like when I first found out about the line I saw Darth Vader and I was like well that's perfect like definitely they should make more and they've gone along and they've done Marvel characters now but Star Wars is still my favorite and then particularly the snow trooper because I like to do the practical effects and I like doing snow so much when they announced that I mean it was like a dream come true for me he comes even comes with like the e Webb cannon and it's stylized yeah you know from the feudal era it's got the little like tripod it moves it pivots like it's the coolest I was asking about that because there are a bunch of accessories here and you have great relationships with you know Bandai Blue Fin this and makers of these toys I'm sure they love the work you do but this stuff like that I recognized that's another bad guy right no no so this is actually a Hasbro piece here so this was part of their centerpiece line it had when when you bought on the store it had Luke Skywalker right right I've seen the pilot outfit and he's like she's kind of jumping off here so I just I thought it was really cool that they had a piece of like an ad at Foot cuz it's good for scaling cuz it's you know just a half of it so it kind of shows you like if you put it next to the figure like okay that would be huge I still think it's a little bit bigger but you know this right used to work with force perspective exactly get a job so I actually had a buddy of mine paint it up for me because it just came gray like a black gray color my buddy Captain Ahab he's Captain Ahab on Instagram he painted it up for me and so I'm gonna use it for this shot I thought snow trooper and at foot it makes sense makes sense the rocks here where are they from so these are made by tamashii nations as well they're pretty cool so you can actually they have these little holes here and you can plug them into each other so they have little pegs and you can connect them and you can configure them however you want so you can make like a you know a piece like this so you can connect them all to make like a kind of a bigger rock so it's a really cool feature to have like for photos and stuff and I mean I like them that's really neat and as we saw last time as you were set dressing quitting your for scene it doesn't take a lot of different pieces to create a full scene because you care about what your camera sees right and so it's just what you need here you know to be the entire story yeah you don't need a huge like set like a movie or anything you can have I mean we have a foam board here these rocks costs like 20 bucks I think and you know so the foam board was a couple bucks 20 you know for like $25 you basically you have a set yeah yeah and then you know excluding the figure and the other stuff but overall you get by pretty cheap I love this the foam board actually makes it easy for you to stick in that's like arrows swords and dress without having to prop things up as a Sara Lee yep yeah it's perfect for that and you can just put them however you want you can take them out put them back in it's it's it's perfect yeah I recognized your bag of flour bag of flour yeah all right so you ready dress the snow yeah a little bit similar as what you did last time kind of sprinkle and moving around yeah exactly so you know there's a little blank spot here I'm just gonna put a little bit there and sometimes I'll what I'll do is like when the piles up like that I don't really it's I don't really like that as much so I'll kind of sprinkle it like this and then I'll take the carousel here and I'll kind of just blow it like this and kind of even it kind of like flattens it out a little bit I mean you could do it with your hand but since I have this I just you know use that and it kind of gives it a different look to and in a way so and the final component is of course your sparkler is your right firecrackers now a little bit of disclaimer of course this is Johnny's process you guys should not do this at home this is not a how-to but we want to watch and observe Johnny eight seasoned professional experienced photographer in this field but what are these just off the shelf just have sparklers yeah they're just you know pretty basic I mean in a shape like a tank so that's a little bit different but it's just a sparkle or effect these particular ones instead of having like the traditional sparkler words one stick like that it comes out of three different areas at once so that's nice to have so you can get a little bit more variety with that it comes a little bit more ground and also I feel like it it doesn't go as long as a regular sparkler kind of just spits it out and it's done which is fine because you don't want to light anything on fire it's more safe that way I think you mentioned earlier you don't like very showy explosive effects necessarily what is your thinking in terms of positioning yeah so when I first started doing the fireworks and experiment with that I would go for like you know I just wanted to capture the explosion I was trying to figure out how to do that and so a lot of the early ones were ill I had big like explosions were like you couldn't really just kind of drown out the scene almost as time went on I started to figure out different ways of like quote-unquote controlling the firework kind of even like as much as you can so like positioning them in different areas where you like so if he's running this way you kind of wanted to come like the explosion to come from that direction or something or wherever you wouldn't wanted to come from and just because these aren't like these things you can just basically stick wherever like out of the way you know like you said small like scaled down so I can really pinpoint kind of so you're literally just tacking that on using adhesive stays in place it kind of blows the flower around yeah and creates a kind of background effect yes yes very cool well let you get set up and lets you take couple photo is cool yeah more than just a couple photos at ten frames a second that's right yeah yeah take a look yeah three two one all right okay so that was awesome first of all really cool to see it live how happy were you with that dispersion it was pretty good as you can see if you scroll through a little bit you can see the stages of it so as it first gets lit it starts to spit out towards the ground and then as it kicks up more it'll get it'll like raise up into the frame a little bit you'll see like as you keep going so you can see how it gets higher like that and then it's it's become super even though it's that's too much but like I don't have to use that one anyways but yeah there it gives you like shooting at 10 frames per second like that in a fast shutter you you have a lot to choose from at the end so you can just fire away and then you go back and then you look at it and then kind of see where you're at and you're able to choose be like okay like I took let's say 40 50 shots scroll through find the ones that you like I like the star I'm just so I don't have to sit through that many photos when I upload in the computer and then I can go straight to those and just be like okay these are the ones that I like and check them out on the computer but yeah there's a good I think that one you just had there was a good example there's you can see I was in the video as you saw me using the air that came here so I gave that a spray that kicked up some of the flower as it looks like dust though or smoky and then with the sparks it really gives it that like battle war feel to it which was that's what I was going for Johnny I love that it's a combination of elements that you're using here the flower compressed air lights and now these sparklers what did you clean up usually when I'm done doing this like if it was outside I'll you know dust everything off we'll take the figure inside wash them off like little soap get that get the smell of like this sulfur off of them because it because some of these did you kinda have a smell to and then yeah it's pretty much you know let them dry and then put them back in his baggie and until the next shoot play with your toys photograph your toys paint your toys it's what we advocate here Johnny thank you so much yeah I don't have you here thanks for having me can't wait to see the long Instagram yeah youhey everybody norm from tested here we're in our studio this time once again I'm joined by Johnny Sargent bananas welcome to our studio thanks for having me it's really cool now we needed to do more projects with you and we want to learn more about your processes and so we invited you here today to demo another practical effect that we've seen in your photos right your tour photo is a little more explosive this time literally yes you're gonna be doing some fireworks today oh so I've seen in a bunch of your photos you've posed scenes where there are explosions in the background whether with vehicles with characters no real time war scenes yes how you think of them yeah pretty much exactly just like in the heat of battle like explosions going off running through like the trenches that kind of vibe it's it makes the poses that much more bringing life exactly yeah exactly so Johnny you've brought up some figures and you're set up making a miniature studio because that's what you do what we learned last time is you use stuff at eight scale six scale yeah so your lights your loom cube lights are also kind of smaller mm-hmm and it looks like the explosive you're working with are smaller as well yeah yeah it's all shrunken down so I brought this character here this is a samurai snow trooper this line is called the Star Wars movie realization line it's made by tamashii nations it is probably my favorite toy line I've said that um time and time again it something about it like when I first found out about the line I saw Darth Vader and I was like well that's perfect like definitely they should make more and they've gone along and they've done Marvel characters now but Star Wars is still my favorite and then particularly the snow trooper because I like to do the practical effects and I like doing snow so much when they announced that I mean it was like a dream come true for me he comes even comes with like the e Webb cannon and it's stylized yeah you know from the feudal era it's got the little like tripod it moves it pivots like it's the coolest I was asking about that because there are a bunch of accessories here and you have great relationships with you know Bandai Blue Fin this and makers of these toys I'm sure they love the work you do but this stuff like that I recognized that's another bad guy right no no so this is actually a Hasbro piece here so this was part of their centerpiece line it had when when you bought on the store it had Luke Skywalker right right I've seen the pilot outfit and he's like she's kind of jumping off here so I just I thought it was really cool that they had a piece of like an ad at Foot cuz it's good for scaling cuz it's you know just a half of it so it kind of shows you like if you put it next to the figure like okay that would be huge I still think it's a little bit bigger but you know this right used to work with force perspective exactly get a job so I actually had a buddy of mine paint it up for me because it just came gray like a black gray color my buddy Captain Ahab he's Captain Ahab on Instagram he painted it up for me and so I'm gonna use it for this shot I thought snow trooper and at foot it makes sense makes sense the rocks here where are they from so these are made by tamashii nations as well they're pretty cool so you can actually they have these little holes here and you can plug them into each other so they have little pegs and you can connect them and you can configure them however you want so you can make like a you know a piece like this so you can connect them all to make like a kind of a bigger rock so it's a really cool feature to have like for photos and stuff and I mean I like them that's really neat and as we saw last time as you were set dressing quitting your for scene it doesn't take a lot of different pieces to create a full scene because you care about what your camera sees right and so it's just what you need here you know to be the entire story yeah you don't need a huge like set like a movie or anything you can have I mean we have a foam board here these rocks costs like 20 bucks I think and you know so the foam board was a couple bucks 20 you know for like $25 you basically you have a set yeah yeah and then you know excluding the figure and the other stuff but overall you get by pretty cheap I love this the foam board actually makes it easy for you to stick in that's like arrows swords and dress without having to prop things up as a Sara Lee yep yeah it's perfect for that and you can just put them however you want you can take them out put them back in it's it's it's perfect yeah I recognized your bag of flour bag of flour yeah all right so you ready dress the snow yeah a little bit similar as what you did last time kind of sprinkle and moving around yeah exactly so you know there's a little blank spot here I'm just gonna put a little bit there and sometimes I'll what I'll do is like when the piles up like that I don't really it's I don't really like that as much so I'll kind of sprinkle it like this and then I'll take the carousel here and I'll kind of just blow it like this and kind of even it kind of like flattens it out a little bit I mean you could do it with your hand but since I have this I just you know use that and it kind of gives it a different look to and in a way so and the final component is of course your sparkler is your right firecrackers now a little bit of disclaimer of course this is Johnny's process you guys should not do this at home this is not a how-to but we want to watch and observe Johnny eight seasoned professional experienced photographer in this field but what are these just off the shelf just have sparklers yeah they're just you know pretty basic I mean in a shape like a tank so that's a little bit different but it's just a sparkle or effect these particular ones instead of having like the traditional sparkler words one stick like that it comes out of three different areas at once so that's nice to have so you can get a little bit more variety with that it comes a little bit more ground and also I feel like it it doesn't go as long as a regular sparkler kind of just spits it out and it's done which is fine because you don't want to light anything on fire it's more safe that way I think you mentioned earlier you don't like very showy explosive effects necessarily what is your thinking in terms of positioning yeah so when I first started doing the fireworks and experiment with that I would go for like you know I just wanted to capture the explosion I was trying to figure out how to do that and so a lot of the early ones were ill I had big like explosions were like you couldn't really just kind of drown out the scene almost as time went on I started to figure out different ways of like quote-unquote controlling the firework kind of even like as much as you can so like positioning them in different areas where you like so if he's running this way you kind of wanted to come like the explosion to come from that direction or something or wherever you wouldn't wanted to come from and just because these aren't like these things you can just basically stick wherever like out of the way you know like you said small like scaled down so I can really pinpoint kind of so you're literally just tacking that on using adhesive stays in place it kind of blows the flower around yeah and creates a kind of background effect yes yes very cool well let you get set up and lets you take couple photo is cool yeah more than just a couple photos at ten frames a second that's right yeah yeah take a look yeah three two one all right okay so that was awesome first of all really cool to see it live how happy were you with that dispersion it was pretty good as you can see if you scroll through a little bit you can see the stages of it so as it first gets lit it starts to spit out towards the ground and then as it kicks up more it'll get it'll like raise up into the frame a little bit you'll see like as you keep going so you can see how it gets higher like that and then it's it's become super even though it's that's too much but like I don't have to use that one anyways but yeah there it gives you like shooting at 10 frames per second like that in a fast shutter you you have a lot to choose from at the end so you can just fire away and then you go back and then you look at it and then kind of see where you're at and you're able to choose be like okay like I took let's say 40 50 shots scroll through find the ones that you like I like the star I'm just so I don't have to sit through that many photos when I upload in the computer and then I can go straight to those and just be like okay these are the ones that I like and check them out on the computer but yeah there's a good I think that one you just had there was a good example there's you can see I was in the video as you saw me using the air that came here so I gave that a spray that kicked up some of the flower as it looks like dust though or smoky and then with the sparks it really gives it that like battle war feel to it which was that's what I was going for Johnny I love that it's a combination of elements that you're using here the flower compressed air lights and now these sparklers what did you clean up usually when I'm done doing this like if it was outside I'll you know dust everything off we'll take the figure inside wash them off like little soap get that get the smell of like this sulfur off of them because it because some of these did you kinda have a smell to and then yeah it's pretty much you know let them dry and then put them back in his baggie and until the next shoot play with your toys photograph your toys paint your toys it's what we advocate here Johnny thank you so much yeah I don't have you here thanks for having me can't wait to see the long Instagram yeah you\n"