ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2023 — REWRITTEN NOVEMBER 2026
The 4th of July fireworks in New York were something I had wanted to photograph for years, and in 2016 my wife and I were finally in the city on the right day. It was the fortieth Macy's show, and that year the barges were on the East River. So we did what half of Brooklyn did: we went down to Brooklyn Bridge Park early in the afternoon, found a patch of grass and waited. The fireworks lasted twenty-five minutes. The waiting lasted most of the day, and that is where most of my pictures come from.
One burst, one phone — Sony a7II
This is the frame I had come for. Two white trails climb out of the river and open into a blue and white shell over Lower Manhattan, the crowd stands in silhouette in front of it, and at the left edge somebody holds up a phone to record the same moment. But it is the last picture of the day, not the first. The day began on a lawn.
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Hours Before Dark
Brooklyn Bridge Park runs along the waterfront below Brooklyn Heights, on the old cargo piers between DUMBO and Atlantic Avenue. On the 4th of July in 2016 it faced the show head-on: four barges fired from the river off Midtown, and a fifth, a double barge, sat just below the Brooklyn Bridge, almost in front of us (Macy's). By mid-afternoon, the grass slopes near Pier 1 were already full.
Settling in — Sony a7II
Blankets, coolers, beach bags, umbrellas against a sun that never quite came out. In the middle of it all, a woman in an ochre headscarf and an embroidered tunic stood reading her tablet, while the people around her sat, lay, ate and scrolled. Above them, on the roof of the old Jehovah's Witnesses headquarters, the red letters of the Watchtower sign still looked down on the park. They came down in December 2017 (Brooklyn Daily Eagle). In this frame they are still part of the picnic.
Hours to go — Sony a7II
Closer in, the waiting had a face. A young woman with two long braids glanced to the side at something I couldn't see, her friend in glasses stared up at nothing in particular, and a woman in a burgundy T-shirt bent over a shopping bag as if the answer to the afternoon were in there. Behind them, a man in a straw hat and a row of people with their arms around their knees. Nobody looked excited yet. Waiting for fireworks in daylight is mostly snacks, phones and conversation.
Another one of us — Sony a7II
I wasn't the only one working the crowd with a camera. A man in a purple cap worn backwards and a wide pink and white striped T-shirt went up and down the path with his DSLR, crouching, framing, laughing to himself at whatever he was seeing. With the 70–200mm I could photograph him photographing from across the path, without him ever noticing. At the right edge of the frame, a small boy in a grey vest stopped and looked up at him, as if he wanted to know what was so funny.
The Barges on the East River
Between the long waits on the lawn, I walked down to the water's edge with the long lens. From the shore of the park, the barges were not a spectacle at all: they were work. In the days before, crews on Staten Island had loaded tens of thousands of shells onto five barges, which were then moved over to the East River for the night (CBS New York).
Moving into position — Sony a7II
This one, HUGHES 297 painted on its bow, slid along the river towards the southern tip of Manhattan with a handful of crew standing at the front and the red-covered racks and blue drums laid out along the deck. Behind it, the office towers of the Financial District under a flat grey sky. At 200mm, it looked less like the start of a celebration than a delivery.
Turecamo Girls and the Peking — Sony a7II
Across the water, the double barge was already moored off the Seaport. A red tugboat, the Turecamo Girls, was tied alongside, and on the barge the white letters of Macy's and their red star stood on a black board as tall as the tug's wheelhouse. Behind them rose the four masts of the Peking, the 1911 barque that had been a museum ship at the South Street Seaport for more than forty years. She left that September for Germany (Tribeca Trib), so this was her last 4th of July in New York. Above everything, One World Trade Center, with cranes still working on the towers around it.
Stay clear — Sony a7II
Closer, the details were even less glamorous: tyres hung along the hull as fenders, rows of drums, tarpaulins, and a hand-lettered board at the far end that read FIRE WORKS — Stay Clear. The water was choppy and the colour of slate. A few hours later, all of this would disappear into the dark and become light.
Night Falls on Lower Manhattan
The spire in the national colours — Sony a7II
By nine the light had gone, the lawn had stood up, and everyone had moved down to the railings by the water. Across the river, the towers of Lower Manhattan were lit floor by floor, and the spire of One World Trade Center glowed red, white and blue. I had swapped the long lens for the 24–70mm and put the camera on the tripod. With the shutter open, the people in front of me kept moving through the frame and turned into soft shapes, a red hood and a green shirt, while the buildings stayed perfectly still.
Photographing the 4th of July Fireworks
The show started at 9:25 (Brooklyn Daily Eagle). Fireworks photography is less about reflexes than about preparation: the camera on a tripod, a remote release, focus set manually on the skyline before dark. I shot at ISO 100 and f/4, at 24 to 35mm, with exposures of four to six seconds, long enough for each shell to draw its own lines. After that, the job is to open the shutter as the trail starts to climb and close it once the burst has opened.
Red, white and blue — Sony a7II
Some bursts were so big they filled the sky, and the long exposure turned the falling sparks into curved red, white and blue lines. Even one of the towers below had its crown lit in the same colours. In front of me, a man in a light blue shirt stood absolutely still through the whole exposure, the only sharp head in a crowd of blurs.
Dotted lines — Sony a7II
Other shells flickered as they fell, and the camera recorded them as dotted lines instead of continuous ones, gold and red and a little green, like stitches in the sky. Below, the silhouettes along the railing, one of them with an arm round the person beside her.
Two trails, one burst — Sony a7II
For this one I turned the camera vertical. Two rockets climbed side by side as white trails, crossed, and opened into one huge gold burst with a smaller coloured one inside it, the skyscraper with the red and blue crown at the bottom of the frame for scale. More than fifty thousand shells went up that night (Macy's and NYC). I shot hundreds of frames and kept a handful.
Then it was over, almost too suddenly, and a whole park full of people picked up its blankets and walked out into Brooklyn at the same time. Looking at the pictures today, the fireworks are the ones people ask about. The ones I look at most are from the afternoon.
If you go, check which river the barges are on that year before you choose your spot, arrive early, and bring a tripod, a remote release and a long lens for the afternoon. And photograph the waiting, not just the show. Subscribe to the newsletter for new stories from the street, along with a free street photography guide.
For more of New York, walk through Brooklyn Unfiltered: A Street Photography Walk, meet the Mona Lisa of Williamsburg, or step inside It'Sugar, a candy store in New York.
Photos: Sony a7II · Sony 70-200mm f/4 (afternoon: ISO 100, f/8, 1/80–1/320s) · Sony Zeiss 24-70mm f/4 (night: ISO 100, f/4, 4–6s, tripod) · Brooklyn Bridge Park, 4 July 2016
See more travel photography in the portfolio. Every photograph in this post is also available as a fine art print.
Cosme Lapena is a Barcelona-based street and urban photographer and founder of bCLPhoto.
Exhibited at espai [b] since 2010 · Published in The Eye of Photography and 35mmc. Browse the portfolio or read more on the blog.
