„Making of“ of my N° 365 shot
http://365project.org/mona65/365/2015-12-31
What you need
- Camera, tripod, cable or wireless release
- “empty” bottle of some bubbly (I found this golden one at the recycling station), appropriate cork, sparklers, insulated electric wire (no reflection and strong), wire cutter, hot glue, playdough.
Cut about 20 cm of the wire and turn the wire on both sides to a loop or spiral. These loops make a good base to hot glue the wire a) on the backside of the cork (not on the bottom), and b) on the backside of the open bottle. Now the bottle has like a little antenna with the cork about 12 cm on top, and still allows placing a sparkler between.
Now you can squeeze some black playdough in the open bottle neck. You will need about the amount of a thumb, as the playdough tends to melt on top and the sparkler stray off balance otherwise.
Exif (no room lights on)
Exposure; 0.4 sec (10/25), Aperture: f/11.0, ISO 200, and I adjusted the whitebalance manually a bit.
Now you just place a sparkler in the playdough, light it and shoot away.
Hazard note: Please take care! Sparklers are kind of firework. Cover all material around the shooting scene with non-flammable material and have a fire blanket nearby.
In sparklers, there are three main components to the composition: a metal fuel, an oxidiser, and a binder. The smoke can be dangerous. Next to the effect that they burn at high temperatures and the sparks can start a fire, they make a lot of smoke containing barium-, iron- and aluminum-oxide,… sensitive people can react during the burning when they inhale the resulting smoke. It can irritate the respiratory tract and cause asthmatic attacks. Therefore sparklers should not be fired in confined spaces or only with good ventilation.
If you own pets, be very careful. Especially for birds, lizards, fishes,… the smoke can be deadly.
Please do not hesitate to contact me, if you have any questions, or this is not clear enough.
Have fun!
