I recently discovered a new type of photography called light painting, which is taking photographs at a long exposure of a source of light moving throughout the shot (creating designs and lines). There are many different sources of light to use in these photographs, such as glow sticks, flashlights, LED lights, fire, and anything that is a light source. Of course, with my crazy tendencies coupled along with my pyrotechnic fascinations, I chose the fire technique to accomplish this style of photographs. After some research, I found a technique that produced some amazing results, where you take steel wool (usually used for sanding surfaces), light it on fire with a blowtorch, and spin it. Once you start spinning the steel wool it increases the amount of oxygen and causes it to throw sparks everywhere. Of course there are much more technical details that go along with this, that would just take way to much space to fully describe, but if you would like to read further about this technique of light painting you can watch this video:
Before I went out to take the pictures I had to figure out a good location, with light painting photography you need a dark place that still has a good background. I ended up underneath the overpass of a freeway with two friends who I somehow convinced to spin fire. I had my camera set up at a high aperture setting (f22), with ISO set around 200, and my exposure set at 30 seconds.
This is the first shot I took, after testing how the steel wool would react with fire and actually starting a large pile of trash on fire. I was really pleased with my first shot but wanted to continue to experiment with this awesome idea, cautiously of course. Below are a couple more of the shots I got.
If you plan on trying this technique of light painting I highly recommend being extremely cautious and even adding a fire extinguisher to your list of supplies! Essentially it is bits of metal that are red hot flying all over the place, and they do take awhile to fully cool down or burn. Always use extreme caution when playing with fire!
