Sparkler Writing

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I hope everyone had a wild and wonderful

Fourth of July!

I photographed fireworks last year,

so this year I wanted to try the long-exposure

sparkler writing photos.

We were visiting a friend's cottage on Long Lake

for the holiday weekend.

 I gathered all the teens and they were extremely

creative and FUN!

Those were the GOOD ones.  We had plenty of

BAD before we hit the GOOD.

It took us awhile to figure it out.

Here are the basics for shooting this type of photo:

You will need a DSLR camera with the BULB setting and a tripod.

Shutter speed:  BULB (meaning the shutter stays open as long as you hold

down the shutter button. Pull out your manual to learn how to set it to bulb

on your particular camera.)

Aperature: f8

ISO: 100

Have someone shine a bright flashlight on the middle

person so you can get a focus.  On your LENS, flip your focus

switch to MANUAL to lock the focus.

With an f8 you will have

a decent depth of field so everything should be in focus.

Think out each person's role before shooting.

Have the kids light their sparklers at the same time.

My kids lit the sparkler in the middle with a lighter,

 and the others lit theirs off of that one.

They quickly returned to their positions

and placed the sparklers in starting position to

write their letter or design.

When everyone is ready, press down on the shutter button

to open the shutter and HOLD IT DOWN until

the design is completed.  This took practice, especially with

several people doing the writing and designs.

I thought we would need to write backwards for

it to show up frontwards in the photo.

We started with this hilarious attempt to write

I LUV U:

(Oops!  Backwards is backwards!)

You may have to reposition your camera to get everyone in the shot.

Where ever the sparkler is moved...it will show up as light in the photo.

My clever kids used two sparklers for the exclamation point:

Here was our first crude attempt to write July 4th.  Ha ha!

Soon the kids were able to coordinate letter size. 

 OOPS again...the 4 is backwards,

but I love how each kid did their own special letter design.

The bright L was done with two sparklers.

My son's friend Jeff thought up the car idea.

It took five people to create it.

This was our first attempt. 

Two kids drew the tires and connected the bottom line of the car.

Two more created the windows and

one person outlined the entire thing.

This was our first try at outlining people.

This was a tad dangerous.

We had three people strike a pose and

three people stood behind them to create the sparkler outline.

The posers said they could feel the heat!

Not very safe when I think about it!

As the photographer, I had to watch the writing and hold

open the shutter until I saw that the entire design was complete.

Below you can see that I let go of the shutter before the middle

person was fully outlined.

These are so much fun to do especially with several people.

Buy lots of sparklers next year and try this for yourself.