Ever wondered what these photographs are? Are they fireworks? How to click these?
This is called Steel Wool Photography, reason being you burn the steel wool and generate some patterns and click it.
I had tried these types of photos earlier, however, I was not successful. Sometimes it was about not getting the required steel wool, sometimes no proper location. After about 2-3 attempts, finally I was able to click what I wanted.
You need some steel wool, egg beater or something equivalent to hold the steel wool and a rope or a stick, so that you hold it and it is not too close to your body. When you rotate the burning steel wool with the help of rope/stick, it helps to create a sprinkling circle.
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| Steel Wool, Egg Beater and Rope |
Steel wool is cheap. I bought around 7-8 such pieces for just 50 INR. You can find this at any local hardware store. Just make sure you are not using scrubber which is used for washing utensils. Problem with the scrubber is that it doesn't burn like steel wool and you won't get the required effect.
Once you have the steel wool, push it inside the egg-beater, such that it will be fixed and will not move while burning.
Once done, attach a rope/chord/stick, whatever you get to the bottom of egg-beater.
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| Steel wool fixed inside egg beater and rope attached at bottom |
Now, you are ready to hold and rotate it.
Next, you have to choose a proper location. While burning steel wool, it produces sparkles and hence you need to be cautious. If you are doing this in summer, make sure you are away from dry grass as it can catch fire very quickly. Prefer a location such a deserted road or a beach.
Coming to camera setup, first and foremost is a tripod. Tripod is a must to get a stable, blur-free image. If you have a shutter release, better. The advantage is you can click a photo without even touching the camera.
Now, you have to shoot on Manual Mode. Forget your friendly auto-mode. Why? You need to control the shutter speed along with aperture and ISO. Since the composition will already have pretty good light from the burning of steel wool, ISO can be set till 400. For aperture, I have gone to 3.5 with my 18-55 mm kit lens. Yes, you read it right! You don't need any high-end lens. Even a simple kit lens does the trick.
Shutter speed, I will recommend to go for a bulb mode. Since you do not know how much seconds your still wool patterns will be burning, its safe to go for bulb mode and release the button once you are sure there won't be any more sparkling. If you set shutter speed too low, say 20s and your steel wool finishes in about 5-10 seconds, your image will contain some "ghost-movements" post steel wool has completely burnt. Similarly, if you keep shutter speed too high, say around 1/2s, you will not get any "patterns" resulted from sparkling.
About generating different patters, you can rotate the steel wool setup horizontally, vertically, diagonally and any way you want it to be creative! There is absolutely no limit. Make sure you have sufficient still wool so that you can do some test clicks before hitting it off. If you think steel wool is getting too much time to catch the fire, insert some a small piece of paper along with it, which will help the steel wool catch fire quickly and burn for slightly longer duration.
Since it was my first successful attempt, I preferred getting the perfect pattern and ignored the background, which as you see, is pitch dark. Next challenge, to get the same result with some stunning background.
Happy clicking!
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