I saw a cool video (wish I could remember where; I’d give the guy credit) about doing long-exposure camera shots of burning steel wool. You put the wads of steel wool in the end of a whisk that’s attached to a cable, and use a 12 second exposure to capture the sparks thrown off from twirling it around. My son Josh and I decided to do our own experiment while we were at the beach this past week. We used a Canon 5D with a 50mm f1.8 lens at f8.
The results were pretty neat. After we twirled some burning steel wool, we went down to the beach for some different patterns (there was too much combustible material near the street to throw sparks anywhere but straight up and down). We also did some shots with me and my nephew and niece running around with our cellphone flashlight apps to make some crazy patterns. The full moonlight and the surf in the background contributed to some cool-looking shots.
