Steel Wool Photography is interesting, exciting, and can be a bit dangerous if not done properly – almost burned my hair last night 😬 but these sparks and lights turned out pretty cool! What you need to create this picture:

-Whisk
-Cord, Chain, Rope etc (something to attach to the whisk handle to swing it around)
-Super Fine Steel Wool Grade 0000 or 000
-Lighter
-Tripod
-Camera with a changeable shutter speed

FOR SAFETY:
-Hat
-Shades/Eye Protection
-Jacket
-Shoes

Make sure you don’t care about these clothes, because a spark might land on the jacket or hat and singe small holes in them.

First, you’ll need to prepare your camera and the steel wool for the picture. For the above picture, I used my Canon 6d on a tripod with a 50mm lens. I set the ISo to 100, the Aperture to f8.0, with a shutter speed of 30 seconds and set a time of 2 seconds before the picture would begin. This gave me enough time to get in front of the camera and begin swinging the whisk. Depending on how much light you have where doing these photos, you may need to use different ISO, Aperture, or Shutter speed settings.

to prepare the steel wool, Attach the chain, rope, cord etc to bottom of whisk. Next, Take enough steel wool out of bag to fill the whisk and pull the wool apart so it loses density and becomes more like a fluff ball. Then, Fit the steel wool inside the whisk. Now that everything is set up, light one side of the wool on fire (the rest of the wool will catch aflame WHILE SWINGING IT). Click the shutter button on your camera and get into position. Finally, begin swinging the whisk around to form a light trail and design in your image. I made the one above by swing the whisk in a circle while quickly walking backwards.

Have fun!! Send me pictures of your steel wool photography!!