I just had all the photos from a black & white photography class I took a few years ago translated to digital. The series this comes from resulted from a conversation I had with one of my classmates. We were talking about how great it was to take pictures of fire, and he mentioned how great tennis balls were for capturing it. You soak the tennis ball in gasoline, then stand back and light it up. The problem with photographing gasoline fires is that they are fairly short-lived - but not with tennis balls added into the equation! The fabric on the outside acts as a wick, and some of the gas gets into the inside of the ball, which keeps the fire going for awhile. They don't just smoulder either - they get a nice long flame going.
I took this series right around dusk/early evening and messed with the exposure time to get everything dark around them. I had the tennis balls contained in a metal ash tray top (the kind with the garbage can underneath that you still see at some businesses), and had my husband swirl them around to get the flames to do interesting things. And I got a ton of great shots with about an hours worth of work. Then we started with the black powder. Not so successful - but at least we didn't loose any eyebrows!
And I'm getting inspired to do more of these - I'll just have to fiddle with the exposure settings, because I can't quite remember what exposure I used.
