Light Up The Night

To intentionally swing burning steel wool around sounds a little like pyromania, but when it is for a good cause – Night Photography – it is perfectly okay. Well, that is if it is done with a lot of safety measures in place.

The technique has been around for a while, so there are countless video tutorials available on the internet, but I learned the “ropes” from a very talented professional photographer, Kevin Adams. My first steel wool spark images were taken on a night photography workshop with Kevin.

There are only a few tools necessary to make it happen:

You need something to hold the burning steel wool while you move it around.Wire whisks work great for this. Get the ones with a loop handle. Then, you need a rope or chain to swing it on. The setup I have in the photo is nice because the chain will not burn if a spark gets on it and with the clips, the length can easily be adjusted and the whisks can be changed out easily.

You must use very fine steel wool – 0 grade or finer

It will easily light with a cigarette lighter or even just rubbing the contacts of a 9 volt battery across the wool will quickly light it.

Once the tools have been gathered, then it is just a matter of gathering a few safety items and heading out to a location to set it all up. You should find a location that does not have dry grass or anything else that could catch fire. Doing this over water is highly recommended.

The person that will be swinging the burning steel wool should wear safety glasses, a hood or something to protect his/her hair from catching fire, gloves, shoes, long sleeves and long pants. It is a good idea to have a fire extinguisher and/or a few buckets of water on hand just in case.