Remember last July 4 while watching the Independence Day festivities, and you thought to yourself, “I wish I had taken time to figure out how to photograph fireworks because I really could make some great images tonight?” That turns out to be a common refrain, so we’re go to help you prepare for next week in advance.

Fireworks displays provide an exciting opportunity to make some truly breathtaking images, but it can be very difficult to capture the magic unless you know a few simple tips and techniques. In the nine-minute video below you’ll learn everything necessary to make spectacular photos at this annual event.

Instructor Joseph Nuzzo introduces the lesson with this promise: “We’ll show you how to take amazing fireworks photos in seconds, using simple techniques that anyone can use.” So, whether you’re a beginner or a veteran photographer, watch this tutorial now so you’ll be prepared in advance.

Nuzzo says he has a straightforward formula “that works consistently every time,” and it’s one that can be used with just about any camera you own. He uses a Nikon Z mirrorless model to demonstrate the settings he recommends. Depending upon the camera you have, it may be necessary to dig around a bit in the menus to make the configurations Nuzzo discussed.

As you might expect, the first bit of advice for achieving optimum results with Nuzzo’s formula is mounting your camera on a steady tripod—just like you would do for other types of shooting after dark. He emphatically insists that, “there’s no way around this, you must use a tripod.”

The next step is rotating the Mode dial to Manual, and Nuzzo provides all the appropriate settings, which you can leave in place throughout the night. Here’s what he recommends: set the aperture to f/11, choose a shutter speed of three seconds, turn off Auto ISO, and manually select ISO 200.

Once you have these simple settings dialed in, you’re pretty much good to go. All you have to do is “point your camera at the sky and take pictures!” If this all sounds too easy, and you want to get a bit creative, Nuzzo says the one setting you can change is the shutter speed.

As Nuzzo explains, a three-second shutter speed provides really nice light trails, but if you want to experiment with longer trails just bump the shutter speed to four seconds and fire away. He notes that you can try pushing this to five seconds, but you may start to see a bit of overexposure if there are numerous fireworks going off at the same time.

There are a few other settings to make, and Nuzzo explains what they are. He also has a “bonus tip” for Nikon shooters as the video concludes, so be sure to watch until the end. There’s much more to learn on Nuzzo’s popular YouTube channel, so be sure to pay a visit.

And don’t miss the helpful explainer we posted earlier, demonstrating how a camera’s histogram will help you consistently nail exposure when shooting in difficult light.

If you’ve made the switch to mirrorless cameras as have many photographers, you’ve no doubt noticed that battery life isn’t nearly as good as what we enjoyed with our DSLRs. In the quick explainer below, you’ll learn several things you can do to make batteries last as long as possible before reaching for a spare.

Instructor Steve Perry is an accomplished pro, specializing in landscape, wildlife and nature imagery. In this 11-minute episode, that he calls “a must see” for every mirrorless shooter,” Perry shares his eight top tips for prolonging battery life.

Perry covers a lot of ground in this very helpful video that offers a bunch of critical advice. He discusses the best methods for measuring battery life with mirrorless cameras, and then demonstrates how to leverage this information into “realistic decisions about your power requirements in the field.”

According to Perry, “the best metric for measuring battery life is not what you think.” The common approach to evaluating power longevity is based upon an approximation of how many images you can shoot per charge. “The problem with this,” says Perry, “is that our camera just doesn’t use that much electricity to transfer an image from the sensor to your memory card.”

Perry illustrates this point with a screen shot, illustrating that the battery in his camera still has a 93% charge after shooting over 5,000 images. What? He arrived at this metric for the purposes of this demonstration by putting a 256GB card into his camera and laying on the shutter button until the card was full.

While this isn’t the way we typically go about our photography, it does prove Perry’s point. If he can capture over 5,000 shots, while exhausting barely seven percent of the battery, something other than capturing an image must be responsible for using up a lot of power—and that’s what the remainder of this surprising video is all about.

The bottom line is this: Just like a computer, “mirrorless cameras have a whole lost of stuff running in the background all the time—that we didn’t have to the same extent, or at all, with our DLSRs.” We’re not going to be a buzzkill by summarizing Perry’s findings here, because you really need to hear him describe his conclusions in detail while watching the video.

Suffice to say, there’s a whole lot you can do, regardless of your style of shooting, to minimize battery drain by following Perry’s advice. He not only reveals time-proven tips, but he will help you determine the minimum number of spare batteries you should carry for different types of excursions.  

Perry’s popular YouTube channel is full of great tips and tricks like you’ll find here, so be sure to pay a visit whenever you have time.

We also recommend watching a tutorial we posted earlier from another experienced pro, explaining how to check a lens if your photos aren’t sharp.

One variable that can make or break a photo is how the color in your scene is represented. Typically, the goal is natural-looking tones (unless a special effect is what you’re after). And that’s OK too.

When making color adjustments in post-processing, Saturation plays a big role, whether you’re after a realistic representation or something more unusual. We have some good news for those of you who use the Curves Adjustment tool to refine Saturation: Earlier this month Adobe added a very small adjustment that can pay big dividends by tackling a common problem with this approach.

Instructor Matt Kloskowski is a specialist in all things Adobe, who says his goal is “to provide straightforward tutorials to help photographers get the results they’ve always wanted,” and this episode fits the bill. He jumps right in to Lightroom’s Tone Curve panel and demonstrates how the new capability works.

Kloskowski begins by demonstrating the most common approach, that involves boosting the highlights and mid-tones a bit and then dropping the shadows by grabbing the relevant points on the Curve. This method, unfortunately, often results in oversaturation.

But here’s the trick, now you’ll find a simple Refine Saturation slider beneath the Curves graph that simplifies the fix because it’s no longer necessary to employ Blend modes to get Saturation right. Kloskowski uses a tight shot of a vibrant hummingbird against a green background to demonstrate how easy this is to do.

This quick trick works with all sorts of photos, and Kloskowski pulls up a pretty seascape scene to prove this point. As you’ll see, in this case he’s able to retain the desired amount of contrast, without oversaturating the shot—simply by moving the slider. Whether you prefer light pastel colors, or a more vibrant look, the new tool gets the job done in a hurry.

After watching the video how about pulling up a few images you’ve already processed and see what you can create by using Kloskowski’s advice. We think you may be surprised at how simple and effective this is to do.

You can find a wide range of editing tips and tricks on Kloskowski’s instructional YouTube channel, so be sure to take a look.

We also recommend watching the tutorial we posted from another accomplished pro, with an in-camera technique for using complimentary colors to capture eye-popping photographs.