One chilly, but thankfully dry, evening in early December, a few members of the group attended a shooting session organised by co-convenor Dave Humphries and hosted by John and Jackie Wiggins. Dave writes:
The principle aim was to see how succesful we could be at photographing flying ‘sparks’ from a variety of sources, so I brought along an angle grinder with a bit of ‘sacrificial’ steel grating, some equally sacrificial wire wool with a metal bird feeder basket in which to burn and twirl it, plus some sparklers. In case we had to move indoors, I also had fairy lights and torches, some of which could flash.
Angle grinding spark trails
John had set up a workmate in the garden, which proved useful for the angle grinder shots, thank you John.
There are quite a few of these, please watch them cycle through, then continue down the page.
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As you can see above, this was quite successfully captured by all photographing, the constant, stationery light source no doubt helped the cameras to achieve focus. (We had problems below with other subjects)
As you would expect, most trails start bigger/brighter and the get thinner (as they cool) the further they travel. However, the photo above shows some surprises, study reveals that sometimes a tiny chunk of hot metal ‘explodes’ into multiple short trails while in flight (e.g. bottom centre). Occasionally, the metal has a ‘spin’ and corkscrews away (middle right hand side), presummably this had bounced off a part of the work bench.
The length and angles some flew demonstrated why I should have worn eye protection while grinding. I was lucky this time, but I won’t make that mistake again. Silly thing is, I had goggles with me, and wore them for the wire wool and sparklers below.
Spinning burning wire wool
The next subject we tried was to spin burning wire wool, where the air rushing past it should encourage a shower of sparks – this worked. The wire ‘wool’ I brought with me was a very dense compact mass, bits were torn off and teased apart so they could be lit when inside a repurposed metal bird feeder, shown in first photo.
When spun, most people only got an arc of one third circle – in hindsight, had I spun it faster, these might have produced a better result for a given shutter speed. Click/tap on images below to see them bigger.
Below Malcolm took a very long exposure, which shows several complete circles, but my body moved a bit too much within the period.
I had lit a head torch to try help the cameras focus, but I’m not sure it did help – and now it just distracts in the final results – another lesson learned.
If we had fired a flash during the exposure, there would have been a sharp, static image of me. Within a multi-second exposure, this could have been done manually with an off camera flash (which I had) by another person. If the flash had a coloured gel on it and fired from the left or right side, the light would have been far more interesting then most photographers achieve. Plenty of ideas to try…
Sparklers
John supplied the sparklers we used and also the fairy lights seen below.
Malcolm Emmett captured and shared the three images above. The camera was tripod mounted and he took long exposures while I just waved my arm about in a variety of patterns. Although the choice of patterns felt limited to me at the time, a short exposure time can make a spiral.
I had planned to try a similar activity with a torch, switching it off at certain times in order to draw say a letter, but that would take practice to be successful.
Fairy lights
The first two photos make good abstract images, the length of trail was limited by the shutter speed. More interesting results might be achieved with a longer shutter opening, and/or the lights moving quicker.
There’s also Malcolm Emmett’s version below.
Below, John demonstrates swinging his blue lights around, where the alternate flashing of the LEDs has illumintaed different parts of the arc, which is quite effective. I post processed these to hide the background details. Click/tap to view the small shots larger.
I had other torches and fairy light sets, some with multiple flash patterns, which it would be worth trying sometime…
I had also wanted to try ‘light painting’ some of Jackie and John’s garden features, but we were all getting a bit cold by now, and really, that techniques relies on a controllable camera mounted on a tripod for a very long exposure, while black dressed people carefully illuminate the subjects while not letting the torch/flash itself be visible to the camera’s lens. It takes skill to pull off properly, but it could be fun to try ….
We end with Jackie’s fun shot of John – looking a bit Christmassy, despite not actually wearing anything relevant. I think it’s the way the light illuminates his face, allied with the background fairy lights suggests it – to me anyway, what do you think?
Several group members missed being able to attend, we are now planning a repeat session in February 2025.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading our story of ‘learning the u3a way’, with members helping each other. Even though I am far from an expert, I hope it helps others and even inspires enough interest for us to have another go. If we can organise ourselves on the night to rotate the people shooting with those being subjects, everyone might get a chance to take some photos – John and I didn’t get a chance to try. More people would help, although even with just 6 in total, we were sometime in two groups, shooting different subjects (John and myself).
A final thank you to all who took part and shared their photos, plus Jackie and John for hosting.
Dave Humphries.