First Published January 12 2018
Decided on a lovely Sunday evening to take a stroll around some of the more open spaces around our glorious city.
What we did was some wire wool spinning.
Let me start off by saying, don’t try this at home kids. I am, of course a responsible adult, and did a lot of checking afterwards for any strays, and also looking after my personal safety as well.
If you want to do this sort of thing, a few bits to remember:
Wear a hoodie or cotton top you don’t mind getting messed up. Cover yourself up.
Wear eye protection.
Wear some leather or fabric gloves.
Don’t do this where:
You can hurt anyone
You can damage any property
Anywhere your not supposed to.
Basically, use your noggin. A bit of common sense goes a long way.
This blog is for entertainment only. Do NOT try this.
This evening i took out the following kit
a D750 Nikon with the Samyang 14mm f2.8 Lens
a D3200 Nikon with the Sigma 10-20mm f4.0 Lens
A large tripod and a travel tripod.
Torches for lightpainting.
Intervelometer for manual control of the shutter speed.
for the spinning, a metal whisk, string, a lighter and the finest wirewool i could find.
If you have a 24-70 lens, or anything that can go fairly wide your golden really.
I took 2 cameras out, as i was a little worried about sparks and my more expensive gear getting damaged, so used the older camera for the closer shots.
I was out with a friend as well who was using a Canon 5d Mk4 and the 24-70 f2.8 lens. He had never really done this before, so i hope it was an educational evening.
First off we started on a log i have always quite liked the look of.
Setting up on some sturdy ground i filled my whisk, got focus by using the infity marks on the lens (everything was past the minimum focusing distance anyway, and everything was nice and clear).
A minute long exposure to catch the stars and also lightpainting the foregrounf and log.
Swinging in a circular motion produces a pretty uniformed pattern. to add interest try using a frame of some sort, or trying to bounce the sparks.
The next shot really brought out the shape of the front part of the old tree and bouncing around near the right hand side. a 1 minute 20 exposure and angling the spin a bit as well.
A 1minute 40 exposure. These were started by a remote fixed to the camera, and involved me running to the spot and back while the exposure was being taken. Luckily in the darkness you can’t really see me other than in the ring of fire. Used the tree to frame up the sparks a bit and a little reflection at the front.
I did fire off the other camera right underneath me, but the shot was over exposed a lot. Being closer to the light i needed to lower the iso and fstop to compensate.
Shooting across to the other bridge with a real wide scene. Pylons, Orion, Pleides, Sparks the lot!. Just over a minute of exposure.
I decided after this shot to do a bit of multitasking, rather than just standing and spinning.
Just over a minute again, this time walking slowly backwards as i’m spinning. Produces an awesome shape.
We decided to start walking back towards the cars at this point as there were a couple of spot to work with on the way, but before that, there was a little walkway and i just wanted to try again with the smaller camera.
Got it bang on this time. This was a 30 second exposure and the settings were just so. You can see where i lit the wool and brought it up to start spinning. Happy with the result here.
On the bridge back to the cars i did a mix of close shots and wide shots.
Low down with the D3200. 30 seconds of madness.
Same as the above shot, just with the other camera at a higher angle. Water either side of this bridge mitigated any problems with the sparks.
Another low down shot. I love the little scatterings of light as the final sparks settle.
This probably looks the most crazy exposure. I did fear for the camera on this one.
Another small bridge and a low down 30 second exposure.
You can see the different effects of each exposure on the same spin. You can also see where the lightpainting was done as well.
Under the packhorse bridge to frame up the shot nicely.
I intentionally didn’t edit out the other camera in this shot,s o you can see where it was as it did it’s work.
Here i set the exposure off and walked backwards and angled the sparks to come out the front of the bridge a bit so not to overexpose.
Some of the things we tried probably weren’t as successful as i’d hoped.
Lights in this tunnel really blew out the exposure and the wool. However you could see this as just a different effect and not a failure. You don’t know until you try.
After leaving my friend to get on home after a long day shooting, i went to another location with the intentions of just relaxing a bit.
But no………..
Taken at the outdoor auditorium on Aylestone Locks. Loved the bouncing off the surfaces with an above the head spin.
You can see how differently the scenes were lit, because of the spinning directions. Both the above exposures were the same length, ISO and fstop.
After this, i thought it time to sit down for a bit and just watch the beautifully clear sky pass me by
A little lightpainting to bring out the foreground. Amazing what you can see considering we are less then a mile from the city centre here.
A stack from the same spot. About 20 minutes altogether.
While i was here i looked up a little info. Built for the millennium, this small auditorium was built out of the old lock gates it now stands next to. Over the millennium a number of plays and acts were put on here. I didn’t really want to disappoint, so put a show of my own on, then let nature put on it’s own show.
Different Angles and Large imposing structures give you lots of different shots to play with. About 20 minutes here as well.
The last shot here i wanted to create fairly symmetrical with the name of the structure in shot. About 20 minutes worth of stacked images.
To get the colours of the wood, i used a daylight white balance for the one shot and more of a tungsten balance for the sky.
I did also take a shot from my mobile. I’m not going to put it up here, but you can see it on my Facebook timeline.
Without a doubt not in the league of the DSLR’s but a bit of fun.
The Huawei P9 is an awesome little phone. Dual f2.2 Leica lens with Pro settings to allow you to change the Shutter, ISO, fstop,White Balance, the lot. It even saves in RAW, so you can edit with a lot more dynamic range. I used Lightroom Mobile to play with this shot while the other 2 cameras were clicking away.
As usual, i planned out my locations and pretty much stuck to a schedule. Some things don’t pan out, but if you have a plan you can get the shots you want, and some fun ones on top.
Even if you veer off the plan a bit, you have a good idea of timescales and what you can do in them.
I will say at this point, it is up to you what you want to do. This is just a blog of my experiences only, and what i did to get the shots. Don’t go doing something silly.
I now have a store for Prints and anything else. Look at the top of the page and click on Shop. If you want to email me for a custom order, or something not in the shop drop me an email.
As always, have fun, stay safe, and enjoy shooting.
Any suggestions for future blog posts, drop me an email. I will at some point be going into more detail on future posts.
you can see more of my work at
https://www.instagram.com/garethnormanlandscapes/
https://www.instagram.com/garethnormanportraits/
https://www.facebook.com/garethnormanlandscapes/
https://www.facebook.com/GarethNormanPhotography/
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