Guest Post: photographing sparklers

July 4th is coming soon and so is the season of picnics, barbeques, swimming and fireworks. Our stores here in CT have all kinds of summer items from picnic supplies to pool toys and a good variety of legal fireworks and sparklers. Last year, I asked my mother, a professional photographer, if she could photograph light drawing with sparklers. We got some really great shots of the glittery light as I scribbled words and shapes in the night air. It was so much fun that we bought more sparklers this year. I asked her if she would share her camera settings and give a few tips on how to take these awesome pictures and she agreed.

How to photograph sparklers at night

One of the first things that I experimented with when I was learning about photography as a kid was lights at night. It’s fun and is a good way to learn about your camera. Sparklers are another way of doing this. When you open the lens for long enough you can capture movement with a camera. That long exposure allows you to draw pictures with the sparklers and to create unique photos of your festivities.

You will need:

Sparklers - here are the two different kinds of sparklers that we bought. The little boxes are fun but the sparkler light does not last very long. The big box marked "neon" is very bright and easier to photograph due to the long burn time, but does not burn neon.
Pay attention to your state and national laws.

You need to have a camera with a Manual setting so that you can follow these instructions. This is marked as M on your camera and can be found on most SLR cameras; many point and shoot cameras, and some camera phones. This will be explained in more depth below.
You can't photograph and light the sparkler, so it is helpful to have a few people working on this and no kids on this one.

You will also need:

Tripod
Masking Tape - optional
Lighter
Piece of tin foil or a non-flammable tin for used sparklers
Flashlight

Setup

Find a safe place to photograph while it is still light out, a driveway or a sidewalk is a good place. Make sure that the background will be dark with as few distracting lights as possible. These lights will show up in your photographs and are hard to remove in Photoshop. Choose where your camera will be set up. Look thru the camera and have another person use masking tape to mark the center and edges of what's visible. This will be helpful if you want to set up more complex shots with writing or broad gestures. When it is dark, you will be able to go to your designated spots and things will run smoother than if you were running around aimlessly.

This picture illustrates with the red arrows how I marked out the frame of the photograph with white tape.
Set the camera to M (manual mode) which will allow you to better control your exposure. Set the camera on ISO 200 to insure that you will have no noise. The ISO tells the camera what kind of light situation you are in. The brighter the object you want to capture the lower the ISO. ISO 200 is normally a daylight setting but because the sparklers are bright you need this setting to capture the detail of the sparkler. This exposure should also insure that the background will be black.

Ready to go

Wait until the sky is completely dark before you start. Set your lens aperture at f/11 because of the brightness of the subject. Set the shutter speed at 8 seconds. Some cameras only go to 4 seconds and in that case set the aperture at f/8. These settings are a starting point. You may need to make adjustments depending on equipment.

Hint - If your exposure is too dark, increase your exposure time or set your aperture from f/11 to f/8. If your exposure is to bright, decrease your exposure time or change the aperture to f/16.

Put your camera on a tripod.

Some cameras will be able to auto focus on the sparkler and some won’t. I have explained both scenarios below.

Type 1 – autofocus method
When your partner lights the sparkler, aim the lens at the light while they hold it still. Your camera will be able to focus. If your pictures look blurry try Type 2 –manual focus.

Type 2 - manual focus
Turn off the auto focus setting and set on manual. This will vary from camera to camera. On my camera, this setting is located on the camera body near the lens on the left side. Illuminate the sparkler holder with the flashlight and make sure your partner is standing in the same place that they will be when you actually light the sparkler. Now focus the camera on something easier to see, such as their hand. Keep in mind that the sparkler will be extended an arm’s length from where they stand. With the focus set, when the sparkler is lit you’ll be ready to go.

You are now set to take the first picture. We got two or three photographs on each small sparkler, and ten 8 second shots with the large ones.

Now you can assess your images for exposure and sharpness on the viewing screen and tweak your settings as needed.

Troubleshooting:

Below are some examples of some photographs that did not work and may help you troubleshoot if you have some exposure problems. I have listed the technical data to help explain why they did not work.

Image A - ISO 1250, f 4.8, 1/30 of a second. ISO was too high image was overexposed.
Make ISO a smaller number, make the f/stop a larger number or make the shutter speed faster to improve the exposure of the photograph.

Image B - ISO 800, f 5.6, 1/100 of a second. ISO too high shutter speed too fast to show any action. The solution is similar as in A but in order to see action the shutter speed has to be longer.

Image C - ISO 800, f 5.6, 1/100 of a second. ISO too high - overexposed. This is a more extreme example of Image A.

Image D – ISO 200, f5.6, 2 seconds. Poor planning in camera frame. This is where the tape and pre-shoot setup are helpful.

Image E - ISO 200, f5.6, 2 seconds. Out of focus. My camera had trouble with auto focus which is why I used the flashlight on my sparkler holder’s hand to focus to produce better results.

Here are some of our favorites that we took because we could – I can never have too many photographs – and that’s the truth!

About our guest blogger:

Photography has been my lifetime career and passion. You can find some of my work on my website or purchase prints on Etsy.  I also have a blog where I am retelling the love story between my grandparents in real time using my grandfather’s love letters. Each one is posted exactly 100 years after it was originally sent. It is a wonderful look into the world they shared. Check it out!
-Beth Shepherd Peters

l i m e s t o n e cowl

A few weeks ago, I went on a field trip to Purl NYC to get some Cascade Magnum yarn. They had a whole bunch of pretty Manos del Uruguay colorways out including a dayglow yellow color called Highighter. It really reminds me of the color of mountain dew in the sunlight. I bought 2 skeins, The Highlighter and Foil- a light grey with a touch of lavender. They looked wonderful together, and it didn't take long to develop a cool stitch pattern that showed off the contrast.

This one turned out kind of nicely and had cool horizontal stripes on one side and a kind of moss stitch on the other.

It turned into a very nice cowl. Even though the Maxima is wool, it is very soft against the skin. I will be wearing this one all summer in spite of the heat and then all winter.

If you like this cowl and want to make one, You can get the pattern on ravelry or Buy it here!

Banana Dogs

As cookout season approaches, people start to look for ways to use up uneven amounts of hotdogs and buns. Taking a note from Japadog, a Japanese style hotdog stand from the US and Canada (they serve ice cream on a bun instead of a cone), I've come up with this sweet treat in a bun that may help use up your extra bread products.

The banana-dog.

Did you ever notice that bananas fit perfectly on hotdog buns? Well, they do. It might seem like a strange combo, but its just another arrangement of the classic peanut butter and banana sandwich but open-faced and with a dash of humor.

Ingredients:
Bananas
1 bun for every banana ( I used Martin's Potato Rolls)
2 Tbs of peanut butter, Nutella, or even Marshmallow Fluff
chopped nuts or candy toppings of your choice (I used 2 mini Reese's peanut butter cups and 1/3 of a Heath Bar)

It could also be fun to add fresh sliced strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, or anything else you might find on an ice cream sundae.

Start by toasting your bun. When the bun is finished toasting, let it cool a bit, then peel the banana and place it in the bun as you would a hotdog. Gently spread the peanut butter or Nutella on top of the banana. Prepare your toppings so they can be sprinkled on top of the banana dog. I chopped my peanut butter cups into quarters and smacked the heath bar against the counter a few times to break it up. Sprinkle/drizzle the toppings on, they should stick to the peanut butter and stay put.

Now eat!

Have a good Memorial Day!

Superfine

I ordered a pound of 64 count merino top from Paradise Fibers with the intention of spinning the yarn for a sweater. It is extremely soft, white, clean, and easy to spin. The only problem is that I'm not good enough yet to spin it thicker than this.

This is the single ply.

And this is the ribbed swatch knit from the 3 plied yarn on #2 needles.

With about 1.25 oz spun, it isn't looking like the best thing for a sweater. Maybe in the future when I can get it up to a fingering weight.

For now, a scarf seems like a good little project.

Spinning

When something new and exciting happens, I usually share it here, but for the last few months I've been too distracted by that new and exciting thing to actually get some photos up. Back in January, I went to Vogue Knitting Live in NYC. There was a lady there with a really great stall selling funky yarn and these little bags of what looked like fiber geodes. She has an Etsy store called Loop.

The colors were so good, SO GOOD, that I bought one even though I'd never really spun anything before.

In early February I could not wait any longer and went looking around the house for something to turn into a drop spindle. It had to be balanced on its own and able to fit around a 1/4" dowel with a hook.

Some people favor CDs or the tops of Chinese food containers. I ended up disassembling an auto returning yoyo, it's smaller in diameter than a CD, well balanced, and it has cool clear plastic parts. You can see the neon colors and now nonfunctional springs.

I started with the spindle, thick at first and eventually thinner. Because of how the fiber was prepped, there were no lumpy bits. The center pull, pre drafted merino silk sparkle blend was perfect to learn on.

 Now I have about 400 yards of this 3 ply yarn. It took about 2 months to spin and another 2 weeks to ply using the Navajo plying method. If some of these terms are foreign to you, that's good, because I don't really know about this stuff either. In the next few months, I will be posting some videos of these techniques.

Seeing how soft, fine yarn was so easy to make, I started to experiment. All that was in the house was this really rough, course core fiber that is usually only used for needle felting. I dyed it with food coloring, and spun the yarn for these swatches:

This is a 2 ply fingering weight yarn made from one section of roving dyed in a gradient then split down the middle.

It's a good example of "breaking" or splitting the color of Wilton black foodcoloring.

And this is a 3 ply fingering yarn spun from roving dyed in a red orange and blue color.

Close up, you can see that the plies are not all the same color at the same time.

After completing these swatches, I couldn't stop. I went ahead and ordered some superfine merino fiber from Paradise Fibers with the intention of spinning a sweater.

We will see how that goes...


If you are feeling inspired to start spinning your own yarn and have questions for a beginner about beginning, please leave a comment. I hope to go into more depth in the future, possibly in the form of a video tutorial and your feedback will shape the content.