During one of his recent Aurora and Night Photography workshops, Alaska-based photographer and instructor Frank Stelges had an interesting idea: what if you tried to photograph spinning steel wool from above?
Australian photographer Rod Evans took his 360-degree camera out at night this past weekend and created this mind-bending "little planet" photo of himself spinning burning steel wool above his head.
Using burning steel wool in photography has gotten a lot of bad press as of late, but one thing's for sure: the stuff looks wild when viewed through a macro lens.
GoPro just released this 4-minute video tutorial titled "Creating Fire Rain: A Steel Wool Experiment." It's a look at how you can create raindrops of light by burning and spinning steel wool, a technique that has gotten a lot of attention (both good and bad) over the past few years.
If you ever try your hand at light painting photography with burning steel wool, be extra careful with safety and legality. Just a few months after a photographer allegedly destroyed a historic shipwreck in California with his sparks, another steel wool photo shoot has burned down a historic 1920s building in a US national preserve.
An iconic shipwrecked fishing boat in Point Reyes, California, was severely damaged by a fire yesterday, and it may have been caused by a photographer's long-exposure light-painting photo involving sparks from burning steel wool.
Steel wool is often done by lighting a small ball of steel wool on fire and then swinging it around in a long exposure photo while it burns. But what happens when you take it to the extreme? The folks over at Joby recently decided to see what you get when you burn a giant 2-foot ball of burning steel wool.
Spinning some burning steel wool around on the end of a rope is popular as a way to create dazzling long exposure photographs. It can also be used for dazzling video as well.
Photographer Richie Johnston created the video above by capturing a woman spinning steel wool in a forest and then reversing the footage. It's titled "Ignition Sequences."
After seeing an online tutorial on steel wool light painting, photographer Simon Berger found a friend to model for him and went out to try his hand at the technique. After some initial success, he started brainstorming creative ideas that he hadn't seen before. The result of the brainstorming was this stunning shot that makes the sparks from a burning piece of steel wool look like rain falling on an umbrella.
The beautiful light painting photo you see here was created using steel wool (here's a tutorial on the technique). Basically, you fix some steel wool on the end of a rope, set it on fire by rubbing a 9V battery against it, and then swing it around to fling sparks all over the place. While it's becoming a pretty common photo project, it can also be hazardous to your lens' -- and your body's -- health. Jon Beard, the photographer behind this photo, learned the hard way. See that thick yellow line in the upper right hand corner? That's one of the bits of burning metal striking his $2,000 Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G lens.
Here's an awesome tutorial that teaches you how to create beautiful light painting sparkler photos. The materials are pretty cheap: all you need is some steel wool, an egg whisk, and a rope or cable. Simply place the steel wool inside the whisk, light it on fire using a lighter (or 9V battery), and swing it around at the end of the cable while your camera snaps a long-exposure photo. Just be careful not to start a fire!