This is a composite photo of 3 separate images merged into a single exposure. What I did was first light-paint the silos with a powerful light source for the first photo. For the second two, I actually had to climb up the rickety, rusting structure which had some missing stairs and was generally quite sketchy and a rush to climb up there. Not just because the structure was so dilapidated, but because what I was doing... I almost knew I was going to have to deal with some sort of encounter with the law to pull this one off. It ended up manifesting that way as well. This was a highly visible location in a small-ish town in Poland.
I had spent about an hour on the location, which was across from some abandoned rail road tracks. It was about 11pm at night and across the tracks there was a large facility adjacent to this one that was also patrolled by security. As I was setting up my tripod for the shots, a security guard shone his flashlight at me for several minutes. At the time, I got sort of annoyed, like "you really think I'm up to no good huh?" while I was there with clearly a tripod and camera. In retrospect, he had reasons for being suspect. I just stood there and watched him shine his light at me and eventually he left. Alas, the real encounter with the law wouldn't happen until I had actually packed all my gear away after finishing the shots.
As I had put the last of my things away, I saw approaching headlights coming in and laughed to myself. I remember I was casually taking a farwell-location piss at the time. The thought of making a dash biking away briefly passed through my mind but I felt calm and I wasn't about to start trying to run from the cops with like a camera bag and a tripod bag to boot. Would have just made myself seem like I was doing something 'wrong' when in my mind, I wasn't doing any harm. Had it been really, really dry and a risk of fire I of course don't spin steel wool but everything was covered in a thick layer of dew. I wasn't really vandalizing anything either, and the only person I was risking was myself.
I spoke to the cops and it's amazing what you can get when you speak to people - anyone for that matter and speak 'person to person' with compassion/understanding the results can be astounding. I simply showed them the pics I had been taking on my SLR and told them what I was up to. They thought I was crazy and did seem concerned for my safety however I assured them I realized what the heck I was doing, was sober, had a phone in case of emergency, etc. They of course looked up my information and it was a small town so it wasn't hard for me to corroborate things as well. So they just told me to go on home which I gladly did.
It was funny though because at one point they asked if maybe I was a terrorist but I got the vibe they were sort of taking the piss at that point we all had a good laugh in the end. Including the security guard whom they had brought along with them - I questioned the guard weather it was him earlier with the light earlier and he seemed confused... I was sure it was the same security guard from before who called me in but they denied it and made a motion in the opposite direction, towards which there was a street. I said aha... Said goodbye and headed out. So happy to have pulled off something which I had thought about earlier and it's amazing when you actually show up and put your ideas into motion!
One of the original exposures during which the steel wool had launched itself out of it's cradle leading to this 'spiral' effect
