Steel Wool Spinning in the Rochester Subway

I liked the Pepsi Cola cap artwork.

On Wednesday evening this past week several work colleagues, their friends and I ventured to the abandoned Rochester subway system for some extreme photography known as steel wool spinning.

Political statements can be found almost anywhere.

Yes, Rochester once had a subway system that has long since been abandoned and city officials continue to debate as to what to do with what remains.  In the meantime it serves as a unique and interesting backdrop for this type of photographic art.

The entrance to the subway near the Dinosaur Barbecue. 

 We were in the area under the Broad Street bridge and Rundel Memorial Library where the concrete surroundings make for a safe environment for flying molten steel wool and the abundant graffiti art adds interest to the shots as well.
This was my first attempt at this particular type of photography and I want to thank Dan Olean for arranging the outing and inviting me along.  Venturing into the dark abandoned tunnels under the city after dark was a little less scary with a group of seven people to share the experience.  For the record, we didn't see another soul the entire time we were there and I didn't really feel all that unsafe.
So how does this type of photography work?  This link will help explain it but essentially you attach a kitchen whisk to the end of a cable, stuff steel wool into the chamber of the whisk, use a 9 volt battery to ignite the steel wool (yes touching to contacts of a 9 volt battery to steel wool will ignite it) and start spinning.

Using a wall barrier to direct the sparks.

Of course before doing all that you should position your camera where you want it (hopefully a safe distance away to avoid ambers) and set it up for a proper exposure.  Most of the shots here were taken at ISO 400 for 30 seconds at f/11 using my Nikon D750 and a 24 mm f/2.8 prime lens.  The resulting pictures are quite dramatic and you get the impression that molten fragments are flying everywhere at a rapid pace.  That isn't exactly how it looks in real time.  Sparks are definitely flying but at a slower rate than the pictures seem to indicate.

Under the library on a sheet of ice.

 The result of integrating all the flying sparks over the 20-30 seconds that they are being produced leads to the impression that it is more intense than it actually is. That doesn't mean it isn't exciting at times.  Seeing pieces of molten steel wool fly towards you and your camera only to fall a few feet short can be a bit exciting.  This is why we all wore safety glasses and old jackets that we didn't care too much about as well as making sure our cameras were covered and our lenses protected with cheap skylight filters.  I don't believe anyone or any gear had direct contact with an ignited piece of steel wool.

View of the Court Street bridge from under the library

We took over 2 dozen pictures of spinning steel wool during the time we were in the underground.  The first several shots were taken under the Broad Street bridge which was more open and had very high ceilings.  After that we moved to an area that is under the public library and had some section of river overflow in it with a thick sheet of ice.  We figured this would make for an interesting effect to see the molten steel wool hit the ice and slide along it.
I only have a  few samples from the adventure in the blog.  I have posted a majority of them to a flickr album that you can visit.  If you are interested in steel wool pictures in general there is a flickr group for those as well.