Playing with Fire II – Take me to the River …
The Steel Wool photography that was the subject of the previous blog entry (Playing with Fire) was taken on a beach on the Colo River in NSW while we were on holidays across the New Year break 2011-2012.
Everyone who had had a turn making sparks the first time was keen to do it again, and the only thing that stopped us was a total fire ban in the area where we were (remembering, for my northern hemisphere readers that it’s the middle of Summer here in Australia).
Two nights after the first attempt saw cooler weather, no fire ban, and Jeremy and I quietly slipping back down to the beach on the river to have a little more fun. Using the same basic setup as before, we only had a short amount of time to play as a storm was threatening to wreak havoc with the cameras (and hence these impromptu raincoats for the cameras – thank God Belle brought big ziplock bags with us!).
You can also see the triggers on top of the cameras in these – I’ve said it before, these Yongnuo triggers are superb, and while basic and not yet supporting many of the higher level functions of more advanced units (such as remote output control on flash heads) they really are brilliant.
Just the two of us …
Time was short, so we got straight into it – and started thinking of different things to do.
I decided to see what I could achieve by running across the field-of-view to see what it would look like – and here it is (from both cameras – front on and from the river).
Naturally enough Jeremy decided he could do better … and he did too!
We did manage a couple more before we called it a night – while the storm never got us the lightning was getting more & more frequent, so these were a bit rushed …
First I did one …
then Jeremy and I paired up for a couple …
during this last one I slowly walked back, giving that spiral effect behind Jeremy.
The Last Chance
The last night of our holiday, and I was told in no uncertain terms by a bunch of the kids (and a couple of the adults) that they wanted to “do fireworks” again. So we did, this time joined by Jill and John, the park managers for the Colo River Holiday Park, and their children Emily and James.
When I was setting up the camera in the river I looked above where the spinning would happen and saw loads of lovely patchy cloud with the moon riding high behind it, which lead to setting the camera at a different angle compared to the previous post.
The first time we did the fire spinning on the beach I was keen to get just the spray of the sparks, and was reasonably zoomed in (for an ultra-wide angle lens) at 20mm. For these I left the lens as wide as possible, and I think you can see why …
Be Well.
Love!