Tuesday Tips & Pics - Writing with Sparklers

We had so much fun on the 4th of July writing with sparklers! To do this, I set my camera on a tripod and set a long exposure - 6 to 8 seconds for most of these.  I closed my aperture down to f/14 to keep the pictures dark-ish with a long exposure, and kept my ISO low to avoid noise.



After my settings were set and people were in place, you simply had to fire the shutter and let people write in the air with their sparklers. For some of these shots, I turned on my flash for a little fill light but the people are still a little blurry because the exposure was so long.
 

I'd like to experiment with this again with maybe slightly slower shutters and smaller apertures so the background is completely black except for what the flash picks up, and then I could probably get the subjects in focus!

This one is me writing my name! If you are clever enough to write your name in reverse, than do so. If not, simply flip the picture on the computer (like I did!) to get the name forward again.
 

The kids had fun drawing shapes. 6-year-old Oscar in the middle was basically just drawing squiggles but I like to think he was drawing a little spaceship around himself!



And while the kiddos drew fun shapes the adults did cute little kissy pictures.



For extra fun, try writing with two sparklers!
 

This was just my first time trying this kinda thing, so I'm eager to try it again. Though I probably won't until next year!