Steel Wool Pt.1

I got bit by the "Instabug", and the infection is getting worse and worse. Instagram has lead me to do a lot of things that I wouldn't have thought to do without it. This past weekend I met up with a fellow Instagramer that goes by @xrissvlad. We headed out to downtown to go check out some freeway spots. But, we ended up spinning steel wool around East L.A. & the L.A. river, instead. Neither one of us had played with steel wool before, so we had to learn some things the hard way.

Lesson 1 - Steel wool can break off in large pieces that will set you on fire if they get on you. ...lucky for me, I was wearing an old sweater that I didn't mind messing up. I just didn't think I was gonna have to stop, drop, and roll with it on. Lol. Xris also got a little heated when some wool landed on his neck. Fortunately, it wasn't a large piece and he was okay, though. 

Lesson 2 - Autofocus is a bad idea when shooting steel wool. The extreme lighting in a dark setting makes the autofocus trip and potentially good shots become blurry messes. Some of the best opportunities of the night yielded fuzzy funk instead of amazing captures, because of my autofocus issues.  

Lesson 3 - Make sure to plan out your shots carefully. You might only get one chance to get the capture, depending on when and where you decide to shot fireballs all over the place. ...And that is what you'll be doing if you spin steel wool. Fireballs of various sizes fly all over the place and they go far and bounce off of things too! A get-away plan isn't a bad idea either, depending on where you'll be starting your fire storm. 

Last, but not least...

Lesson 4 - If you spin the wool with a whisk, it's a good idea to bring a spare or the tools you'll need to fix the whisk if it breaks. Good thing is, this one wasn't one of the hard learned lessons, since Xris came prepared for such an event. Otherwise, we would have had to end the light painting session early. But he fixed the broken whisk and we were able to go back to shooting the shooting fireballs again.   

Despite the fires and burns, we had a lot of fun spinning wool and I will be doing it again! Here are some of the light captures that I got during my first steel wool adventure. You can see Xris' captures on Instagram @xrissvlad. Dude is talented and definitely worth checkin' out!