Fire Spinning
Recently we had a Carrick Camera Club shoot on Annestown Beach, and one of the shots involved lighting steel wool. It is called Fire Spinning and involves and doing some fast revolutions of the item while at the same time having the camera setup on long exposure.
To get a good Fire Spinning photo you need a long exposure. I was using Bulb, averaging 50 to 80 seconds and one of the results is shown below. Its a nice effect and more of these can be seen on my Flick channel.
Fire Spinning – Playing with Fire on Annestown Beach
If you are doing Fire Spinning yourself, please be careful as there are plenty of bits of hot metal which can fly around. Steel wool has a flash point of 250C and a melting point go over 1500C so Fire Spinning could result in serious injury if you are not careful. In order to get a good Fire Spinning photo don’t forget to use a tripod, turn off Mirror Lockup, use a cable release.
This photo was taken in the winter so one other tip is bring a flask of tea as it gets fairly cold on a beach during this time of year. Enjoy!