Painting With Light -
Steel Wool Photography

Steel wool photography is a technique that generates captivating light trails and sparks by igniting steel wool and spinning it rapidly. I employed this technique to create a fire rain effect and also as a portal. 
 
What I used was a Grade 000 steel wool for the best ignition, a steel whisk tied to the end of a dog leash to spin the wool around. 
 
To set up, I went to a dark, dry area and made sure that my model didn’t move as well as put my camera on a tripod.  I put my camera into manual mode using a longer exposure of about 10-30 seconds. 
 
I first lit up my subject with a flashlight. I did this 3 times, once with a regular flashlight, and then twice I put a coloured gel in front of the flashlight. I lit up my subject out of view from the camera to ensure no streaks ended up in my photos.
 
After lighting my subject, I stood behind my subject with my steel wool in the whisk tied to the dog leash. Ignited the steel wool and spun the whisk around. 
Once I finished shooting, I was left with 4 differently lit photos. I went into Photoshop and put each photo on top of separate layers and ensured that each layer lined up perfectly. 
Once all my layers were lined up perfectly, I used the lighten and screen blending options and played with the adjustments in Photoshop to combine all the layers together to get one final photo.