Sometimes you are presented with a good photographic opportunity, out of the blue. You are just having fun walking around the river bank with some pals, while suddenly you hear loud bang and beautiful lights filling up the night sky. You take out your camera and prepare to take the next one (you always bring your camera with you, right? 
). You set your camera to aperture priority and tried to take some shots, but because of the low light (heck, the sky is pitch black) your camera set the shutter to 2 seconds to compensate. You got the shot, but its totally blurry. You then change to setting to shutter priority to 1/50 second to avoid camera shake. But all you are getting is pitch black images. You wonder what you should do now?
I reckon most of you have experienced that type of event before. Now we will explore several options you can try to (hopefully) get a decent night shoot without using tripod.
Increase the ISO rating
Maybe its just me, but I think grainy images is much better than no usable image at all.
ISO 400 1.6" f16 - My first try of the night. I was bracing againts a light pole to gain stability. Notice the fireworks are sharp but the background lights are very blurry. Which give this image a little bit more additional impact.
Bracing Your Camera/Your Body Against Something Solid
There is two way of doing this. If you are using SLR without swivel screen, the it will be lots of trial and error. But if you have point and shoot with swivel, this will be easier. This is fairly easy. Just put your camera on the ground/fence/car or anything solid, but pointed up to the fireworks, with your right hand on the shutter, but bracing on the solid object. Usually with some practice you can get pretty good steady images.
ISO 400 f4.5 1/2" - I brace my camera on the fence to get this shot. Set the focus manually to infinity, then we are good to go.
The other way is to brace your body against a big solid object. Maybe a solid wall or a electric pole. Make sure you dont destroy it 
Well, thats it for now? Do you have any other tips you would like to share? Drop em in the comment area.