Wirewool Spinning is a bit of an art, and takes some time to get right.
This photo took some time to do and put together. I took 2 long exposure photos, a lot of lighting and falling over at least once!!.
I’ll go through my process for this shot from start to finish. Before we start though, if you want to do wire wool spinning, be very careful, and follow local laws.
Getting Ready
First of all you need to know what to go to site with and get setup before shooting. For me it involved the following hardware.
Nikon D750 Full Frame Camera. A Workhorse and Great Low Light Camera
Samyang 14mm f2.8 Lens. Great for Wide-field Astro Photography.
Q-666 Pro Tripod. Not the most expensive, but solid and reliable.
AD200 Flash with Fresnel Head on. Only needed for low power here, but a great location portrait head.
Intervelometer. If you don’t want to use the internal one, or require longer than 30 second shots.
000 or fine wire wool
A whisk and chain.
Lighters
You can also see what kit i generally take with me if you click here on my youtube channel.
This shot requires 2 people, one to control the flash head and one to spin.
When you get to your location setup where you want to take the shot from, and take a couple of test shots to make sure your focus is right. It can sometimes take a couple of goes to get it spot on.
Getting the Shots
The main things to think about, as in most photography is the following.
How much light you want to allow into your camera(aperture) , how long you want to let it in for(shutter), and how sensitive you want your sensor to be(ISO).
Those numbers are very different to say portrait photography, or daytime landscape photography. Either way it’s all about balance.
For these shots, i took a couple of tests before hand at the settings i generally start from, and refined to where i was happy.
I wanted to make the exposures 30 seconds long. More so i could continually shoot with the internal intervelometer, and have enough time in between shots to move where i wanted without having to return to the camera. Less to go wrong from my point of view.
So onto the photos. F8, ISO250, 30 Seconds One Spin and 2 flashes @1/128 th power.
Pretty much the same as the test shots and happy with the exposure.
The second shot i had to climb up the side of the embankment and get on top of the bridge. This took a minute as it was a bit wet. Spin done, hit the deck then Gary Hit the scene with 3 flashes @1/128th power on the whole scene left to right. Same exposure settings and happy with the results.
Editing the images.
I’m not going to go too deep into this, as it’s really personal preference. On both of these shots i did the following in Adobe Raw.
Took the contrast up, Took the Highlights Down, Took the Whites Down, and Smashed the Clarity to the top.
Did the usual lens corrections and chromatic aberrations and brought them into Photoshop.
Bring them both into the same workspace as different layers. If required, do an auto alignment, just to be on the safe side.
After this, the best way I’ve found is to lighten the top layer, and it will bring in the lighter parts of the layer showing both spins. You could go even further and use a layer mask to work out any elements you don’t want from the lightened layer. That is up to you.
You can watch how these photos were created on my youtube channel by clicking on this link.
Also check out my partner in crimes instagram as well. Garys Instagram Account
If you have any questions please leave a comment if you want.
There are more blogs about wirewool spinning through my site.
Finally, have fun and 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
#garethnormanphotography #waterfalls #longexposure #landscape
About Me
I’m Gareth, a 38 year old IT contractor, Photographer, Eternal Optimist and Blogger. I have been behind a camera for about 4 years now and love shooting the stars, and anything else for that matter. Learning is the main aim for me. I am a family man, and strive to be the best i can be in all fields that i put my mind and heart to.
