I’ve seen lots of photos that look like this:

After doing a little searching, I figured out that it’s steel wool. A few friends and I went out in the country to test it out. A pack of steel wool is around $3 at Lowe’s. You can’t get entertainment much cheaper than that!

I built a ‘cage’ out of a clothes hanger and attached it to a dog leash so it would be easy to swing around.

We tried a few different things: swinging it like a lasso, swinging in a circle motion, and even swinging it then throwing it in the air:

We also tried hitting a friend in the back:

All in all, it’s really fun to try if you have a place that won’t catch on fire. If you want to mess around with settings on your camera, and enjoy doing long exposures, I recommend trying this out.