Is your city puting on a massive pyrotechnics display this weekend? Or maybe just your neighbor Carl? Either way, you can learn how to capture the moment in all its noisy, exploding glory with a digital camera.

Ideally, it pays to use a camera that offers some level of manual control over the settings. That way, you can dial in the best exposure, aperture and focus settings to achieve the best results.

But you can still take good photos of a fireworks display no matter what kind of camera you have. Yep, even the iPhone!

Get all your equipment together, run it into the park or street mall or wherever you're planning on celebrating, get fully hammered, wake up in some sorta-known friend's living room, half-dressed in your booze-sweated clothes, find your keys, oh look, they're there with your camera, man, you totally forgot about your camera, find your car with a ticket on it, but shit, at least it's there, right, drive home, realize you're out of eggs, eat your leftover lo mein, when'd you get takeout, was it Wednesday, it doesn't matter, it doesn't taste off, well, OK, a little, but fuck it, you're hungry, check your memory card, it's got, like, three photos from when it was still light out, go to Flickr, find some Creative Commons photos from last night, and set one you didn't take as your new wallpaper.

Manual photography: it's that easy.