Firestarter

This is a shot I have had in mind for a long time, and was able to finally get it thanks to some help from my brothers Phil and Tom on our recent family vacation. It's a particular style known as Steel Wool Photography and ever since I saw a few examples several months ago I have wanted to give it a try. When we headed up to our annual trip to Milford Lake in central Kansas we went to the beach and spent about a half hour playing around with different compositions until we found a few that we liked. The basic idea here is pretty simple, but takes a bit of planning to pull off along with the following sundry items:

Kitchen whisk from the dollar store
Two feet of chain
Connector to hook chain to whisk
00-grade Steel Wool from any hardware store
Cigarette lighter

All the above items can be bought for less than $10, and after that you just need a dark night and some open space to play around. The spark trails come from the steel wool itself: light it on fire and it will start to glow, an