The country’s birthday is tomorrow and before everyone starts priming themselves for an all day booze-a-thon, I just want to remind everyone to be safe. We all know that things have a potential to go wrong when strong drink and advanced machinery get mixed. So please, don’t drink and take shitty fireworks photos.

There’s no greater tragedy that can happen on this national holiday than cycling through your photos on the 5th and realizing you took about 50 pics of blurry amorphous light blobs. Lifehacker’s got some tips for good fireworks pics this year.

And if you were planning on using a flash then just give me your camera right now and go take a time out.

Thanks to Chase for the pic.