About this limited edition photograph:

The light painted photograph “Tree of Life” was created in the Community Prairie/Butterfly Garden in Decorah, Iowa.

Tree of Life is my most popular photograph to date. To create this light painted photograph I placed my Canon T3i camera on a tripod and I used a long exposure of 326 seconds. I created the fan of sparks appearing behind the oak tree by standing behind the tree and spinning 0000 steel wool in a circle while on fire. This threw sparks 25 feet in every direction, and it allowed me to backlight the tree so that the tree’s silhouette would pop out. The sparks all landed in snow, so there was no risk of starting a fire. 

This photograph came off my camera as-is, and involved zero post-processing or Photoshop.

Nocturnal Designs © 2012.