I’ve been set up in my usual spot to photograph fireworks this year, but with a slightly lighter kit than usual, a small mirrorless camera, and a kit lens. With the advent of Photoshop’s Generative Fill tool, I probably don’t even need that.
Some years, I get lucky and capture the right moment with the right settings, with a nice foreground and a perfect amount of fireworks flying across the sky. Other years, I’m in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and the sky is full of smoke or worse, nothing is usable. In those cases, I can sometimes save a day by getting some artistic permits and stitching together multiple fireworks photos. This year, I did both of those things and added a third method: Create fireworks using Adobe Photoshop’s new AI-based tool, Generative Fill. For your consideration, check out my three fireworks shots this year:
While the pictures look similar on the surface, something very different is going on in each of these photos taken across from Station Yards in Ronkonkoma, NY One of the photos in the collage was taken right from the camera, meaning the fireworks in the photo really exist when you see them, and other than correcting the tone and color of the photo and cropping it to make it fit in the box, nothing add or subtract.
One of the other photos is a compilation of some actual fireworks from the scene. The composed moment does not actually exist but is a combination of many factors to create a photo. And finally, the third photo uses elements created from thin air in Adobe Photoshop.
Can you guess which photo it is?
I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the post, but from time to time I’ll add a few words to give you space to look at the photos.
Technology versus time
The amount of time used to create these images varies widely. Of course, getting the image right in camera is the fastest way to do things, and if I’m very lucky to get the right image every time, this has always been the way for me. Authenticity comes first, though I suppose it’s worth talking about my old-school photojournalism.
However, when making art, collage is not a bad idea. But to do this requires planning ahead. I had to make sure that my camera was carefully placed on a tripod and that during many exposures I didn’t move the camera at all. To make sure I had enough to capture the fireworks for later blending purposes, I set my camera to manual, dialed the exposure at ISO 100, f/5.6, and a shutter speed of 3. ,2 seconds so I can get some streaks in the sky. Changing any of these settings will make things harder to blend later on. I set a timer for 99 shots and let it go. In Photoshop, I selected the flares that I wanted to stitch together, then loaded them into layers and adjusted the blend modes to make things work, then removed some of the overlap or artifact with healing brush.
It’s a meticulous process that takes about 30 minutes or so to select and edit photos, not to mention the care and time it takes to take the photos to create the composite.
While it’s not as fast as getting it right in-camera, what I did for the AI-generated fireworks photo was upload a photo of the scene with the sky without the fireworks. Then I used the selection tool and used the Generative Fill box to enter “Add Fireworks”. It gave me three options, I chose one of them and that was, literally, it. About 2 minutes from start to finish.
And the craziest part, I posted the pictures on my social media channels to see if my photographer friends could tell the difference, and all the answers were the same. available. AI and synthetic images are often mistaken for genuine articles.
That said, there’s something about using AI to add fireworks to this photo that annoys me a bit. It just doesn’t feel right, and I, while I could, as a photojournalist, put my finger on the exact reason why (it’s simply not real), with As an artist, I don’t know what’s wrong or right anymore. You have? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
(Answer: Photo A is a collage using real fireworks. Photo B is an unedited photo. Photo C uses AI-generated fireworks)
