Camp fires burning

This week for Samhuinn we are looking at the element of Fire. We headed out to Blackford Quarry at dusk with fire toys and wood. M talked us through the history of fire, from prehistoric man utilising bush fires when they came across them, to learning to carry fire and maintain fire, then learning techniques for lighting fires. He showed us bow drills, flint and steels, fire pistons, lighters right through to the modern day match. We learnt about different accelorators, tinder, kindling and how to build a good fire.

Once all the learning was out of the way we had a nice relaxing evening around the fire, playing with fire toys (which I haven't done since a frosty day in January) and drank warmed spiced honeyed whisky.

I'd taken along my tripod to play around with night time photography. I got some lovely shots of the fire, some of fire spinning, I even had a play with painting with light (though with a maximum shutter time of 8 seconds, this was limited). I had too many of those shots to choose from so decided to go with this long exposure of S, E and L around the fire. The thick cloud reflected back the street lights giving the shot an orange glow. I loved how E is deep in thought and captured still in the shot whilst S and L are moving and blurred!