What You Need for Steel Wool Photography

Steel Wool Spinning

Oct twelfth 2012 by Andrew S Gibson

« Lenses I Ain |  Essential Evolution: New Craft & Vision ebook past Sean McCormack »

Photography opportunities don't finish once the low-cal gets depression. If you lot have a cablevision release and a good tripod so the creative possibilities continue well into dusk.  The photo higher up was taken when it was nearly night and shows the type of dramatic images yous can make at this time of evening. You can create similar images yourself with little more than some steel wool, a whisk and some string. Here's how.

What yous demand

• Steel wool.
• A whisk.
• String.
• A cigarette lighter.
• Masking tape.
• Fire extinguisher.
• Protective clothing.
• Willing helper.
• Dramatic location.
• A camera with transmission mode, cablevision release (or remote), tripod, broad-angle lens, UV filter and lens hood.
• Common sense. Fire is dangerous, so exercise all due caution with these techniques. I'm non responsible if you burn yourself or set something alight!

How to do it

The steel wool spinning technique is very simple (and a lot of fun). Take a wad of steel wool, pull the strands autonomously (to permit the air in) and stuff it inside the whisk. I used masking tape to hold information technology in place as the steel wool had a tendancy to fly out before it had fully burnt. So necktie some string to the cease of the whisk. Become your helper to set the steel wool alight with the cigarette lighter and and so use the cord to whirl the whisk around in the air. The burning steel wool escapes from the whisk and flies to the ground, creating brilliant orange light trails. All that's left for you to practice is find a practiced viewpoint and accept the photo.

Photographic camera technique

When we tried this we found the steel wool burned for around x seconds or then earlier fizzing out. I used a shutter speed of 15 seconds for each photo. I prepare the exposure mode to manual and used settings of ISO 400, f13 and 15 seconds throughout the shoot. This seemed to piece of work well. The background was too brilliant in the get-go few images, and so I darkened information technology in post-processing. In the concluding couple of photos the sky is almost pitch blackness thanks to the fading light.

Yous'll get a dramatic paradigm with a wide-angle lens. The first fourth dimension Kathryn spun the wool I positioned the tripod well back so I could see where the steel wool was falling. Then for the side by side shot I moved the tripod forward so it was on the border of the falling sparks. I stepped back from the camera after pressing the cablevision release (a remote would exist even better) to avert the sparks. I fitted the lens with a UV filter and lens hood and so that the front element wouldn't be damaged if any burning metal hit it.

I used manual focus. I focused on Kathryn before she started spinning the steel wool and let the small discontinuity take care of depth-of-field. Equally it got darker I couldn't see her clearly in the viewfinder, and then I used Alive View. In Alive View the photographic camera amplifies the prototype so you can see information technology more conspicuously on the LCD screen. You can also utilise the magnify button to zoom in on the spot where you want to focus. This makes it much easier to run into if the lens is focused where yous desire.

Observations

• Burning steel wool is hot. The person doing the spinning needs to comprehend up equally much as possible. A hat and prophylactic goggles are a expert thought.
• The aforementioned goes for the photographer, if you are inside range of the sparks.
• The steel wool flies off a long style. Make certain you lot're trying this in a location where no-one else volition walk close by.
• Don't endeavour this somewhere with flammable fabric or dry grass nearby. Take a fire extinguisher in instance y'all set something alight.
• We took these images in a fix of deserted WWII bunkers near Wellington. The location was ideal because I could position the photographic camera beneath, higher up and level with Kathryn to create this set of images. Also, being physical, we couldn't accidentally ready the bunkers on fire.
• Shoot Raw. That way yous can adjust colour temperature in post-processing (I used a setting of around 9200K for most of these).

More than inspiration

Take a look at the photos of Jules Marshall and the Spinning Wool Flickr group to see how other photographers are creating dramatic images with steel wool spinning. They employ a variety of techniques including using gelled flash to low-cal the background during the long exposure.

These articles volition give you lot some background on the photography techniques used to create the images on this page:

Using Manual Fashion

Playing with Fire

More than photos

Hither are some more images from the shoot:

Share this post