The Wire Wool Adventure: Learning How to Do Wire Wool Spinning Photography
Back when I first starting doing photography, I quickly saw shots of one thing that absolutely blew my mind - wire wool spinning.
I looked at it, thought to myself ‘how the hell do you do that?’ and filed it away in the depths of my mind, hoping that one day on my photography journey I’d get the chance to do it.
Now is that time.
Just a few nights ago I hit the beach at Seaham with some fellow photography friends, and a willing model up for actually doing the spinning (deffo the most dangerous part!)
I am so, so pleased with how these turned out.
How is this trickery done, I hear you ask? Well…
Find a Location - It’s Gotta be Somewhere Safe!
Wire wool spinning is cool and all, but it also flings around a lot of sparks.
That means you need somewhere where there’s not a chance that the sparks will ignite something nearby.
A quiet night at Seaham beach was perfect for this as we were far enough away from other people and close to a body of water. So any errant sparks would just go out on the pebbly rocks underneath, or simmer out in the sea instead.
Prep and The Spinning Technique
To do wire wool spinning, your most important tool of all will be the implement you use to actually spin the wool itself.
Despite what you might think, this doesn’t have to be expensive!
You can use a simple whisk you’d find in any kitchen, attach it to a length of rope, a dog lead; whatever you’re got that’s flexible and easy to spin around your body without hurting yourself!
Once you’ve got your whisk/lead/rope/other implement combo, you need some wire wool.
You can buy that plenty of places; just give steel wire wool a google.
Once you’ve got it, break it up with your hands (this helps the air flow better and the sparks to fly more!), stuff it into your whisk, and use something such as a candle lighter to ignite it.
Don’t worry! Wire wool doesn’t go WHOOSH and blow your face off with flames. Instead it burns slowly, and as you start to spin it, the sparks will start to fly and intensify before it burns itself out.
Capturing the Shot
To get the perfect shot with wire wool spinning, you’re gonna need an essential tool: a tripod.
Wire wool spinning is all about long exposure; so when you take the photo, you need your tripod to keep the camera steady as any movement while the camera is still capturing will blur your photo.
Once you’ve got that, and your camera is settled nicely on top of it, you’re gonna need to adjust your settings.
There’s no exact rule for this as lighting conditions always differ, but in the shots you can see on this page, I was shooting just before full sundown at Seaham Beach where light pollution was minimal.
My settings were:
ISO 100
Aperture: F/ 22
Exposure time (shutter speed): 10 seconds
You may need to play around with this and shorten/lengthen your exposure time depending on the current light. You should however be able to leave aperture and ISO on the settings outlined above.
Once that’s done, whack down your tripod, plonk your camera on it, and ensure your focus is on the person doing the wire wool spinning.
Now press that button, wait 10 seconds (or so!) and watch the magic unfold. For extra stability, you could also use a remote shutter release, meaning you don’t even have to touch your camera.
-Dan
