Fireworks Captured in Dramatic Long Exposure Photography

Via Colossal:

The technique I used was a simple refocus during the long exposure. Each shot was about a second long, sometimes two. I’d start out of focus, and when I heard the explosion I would quickly refocus, so the little stems on these deep sea creature lookalikes would grow into a fine point. The shapes are quite bizarre, some of them I was pleasantly surprised with.

What’s interesting is that unlike usual firework photos that seem to make long trails across the sky, Johnson’s photos look like flowers with little triangular plumes coming to a point. Pretty amazing. You can see several more photos here.