The kids always enjoy a good firework display and they were treated to a particularly fine one over the Halloween weekend during our half-term getaway at Butlins.

Fireworks are always a challenging photographic subject. They’re difficult to frame and focus and it’s tricky to find the right exposure time that is long enough to capture the light trails but short enough to avoid camera shake while shooting hand-held.

So when you get it just right, the end result is a rewarding one.

I was as happy with this shot as the kids were about watching the display. Better still, it was captured not with my DSLR but with the camera on my iPhone 6 and without any fancy post-shot processing other than a simple crop to convert it to square format.

A smartphone is never going to offer the same flexibility and consistency as a DSLR but with a half-decent eye, a little anticipation and a soupçon of luck, it’s amazing what you can produce. Having a good camera helps, of course, but often people forget that it’s the photographer as much as the equipment he/she is using that is crucial to producing photos that are great rather than merely adequate.

I will be starting up a ‘Photography 101’ series after Christmas, providing simple, practical advice to demystify the tools, techniques and terminology behind taking good photos.

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