This is my favourite light painting image that I have taken. I've sold quite a few copies of this in various mediums too.

How did I create the shot?

It all started whilst on my commute home from my day job, traffic was snarled up and my only course of action was to take some back roads and attempt to find my way home. As I snaked through the country lanes I came across an underpass under the Motorway. I instantly loved the repeating pentagon styled arches and knew I had to light paint them asap.

The following evening, I waited until after dark. Then with a friend in tow to help we made our way to the underpass.

My first thought was to try and capture the whole thing in one exposure, however, the sodium lighting under the bridge killed that idea as it gives off a hard yellow/orange glow which ruined the image, in my opinion.

Instead, I decided on a composite, I'd shoot 5 separate images, without moving the camera and stitch them together in post.

The Technique

The Technique used to create the circles of light with sparks flying from them is really quite simple, though a little dangerous. The material used is called Wire Wool (commonly used in decorating where paints and varnishes are used, I found that a super find grade works best), when it burns it burns very hot (as you would guess metal would burn!) and molten embers will fall off as the material 'melts'.

In order to produce the circle effects, we need to spin the molten material around without burning ourselves in the process. In order to do this, I bought a metal cage bird feeder, attached a length of paracord at the right length to give me a good sized circle. Next, load the bird feeder with Wire Wool and ignite.

BEFORE IGNITING - I'd strongly recommend you wear good heatproof gloves, head and eye protection and non-flammable clothing

Igniting the wool can be difficult, as it is metal after all, but I found a high powered cigarette lighter works fine, but a 9v battery is even better. Using the battery to light to wool, just push the head of the battery, where the contacts are, into the wool and it should start to glow.

Now spin the wool around in a circle!

The Camera Settings

When shooting light painting we tend to be shooting in dark environments and working with bright objects.

I like to keep the ISO as low as I can to preserve the image quality, in this case, I shot five 20 second exposures all on 400 ISO and combined them in Photoshop.

Please be safe when your experimenting with this photographic technique

More photos from this shoot

Check out some of my other Creative Photography Posts
Light Painting with Wire Wool
Shooting the Milky Way with Long Exposures
Light Painting with LEDs and Long Exposures
The Classic Fair Ground Long Exposure
Utilising the mundane
Infra Red Photography
Monochrome Landscapes
Colour Splash
Freezing time with a flash
Lighthouse Long Exposure

Note: all photos on my posts are my own unless stated. If you see an image you like and would like to use it, please contact me