Lauren — Yeah, I didn’t mean to have the ISO on 400, but on 200. 400 is generally not too grainy depending on the quality of light. I was relieved that these didn’t end up grainy!

I wouldn’t say I’m a purist. I crop photos sometimes. Although I tend not to crop them before posting them here and then people have the opportunity to suggest better crops. I agree that the framing on this one is not so hot, but I’m also not sure where I would crop it to. Check out the next one and see what you think.

What I like about it (since you asked): good shutter speed, you captured the way fireworks look to us in real life in a single frame. On my monitor at that resolution, the ISO is surprisingly clear; there is very little grain to the image. To improve, I would like to see some shots where the fireworks take up the whole image. Maybe even just cropping this in Photoshop/GIMP would do it (or are you a purist? ;p ).