This is a Tesla coil with high voltage sparks coming from the end of a rotating rod. It looks dramatic in a long exposure exposure of 22 seconds. The first thing that came to my mind on seeing the photo was the Eye of Sauron.
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This photo has been seen by perhaps 500,000 people worldwide now since Feb 2007 and resulted in well over 100,000 hits to my site. My ISP ran out of bandwidth and had to shut me down for a day after 330 GB transfer. It was featured on some big sites and hundreds of blogs and was also popular in Russia and Japan. It was the turning point in my Tesla coil photography.
The “Aura of Sauron” above looks unreal, but there is no “photoshopping” anywhere on this website. All my photos are single exposures with very little post processing ie real photos. However, unusual effects come from doing things during a long exposure. This can be striking particularly if the source of sparks have shifted or rotated as above.
This animation shows the effects of rotating the rod on top of a running Tesla coil. In real time it takes 7 seconds per rotation. Streamers branch out into the air and sparks connect with another object like the ladder. Imagine looking from above and putting all the streamers in one photo.
So how did I start doing this? Being a bit jaded by plain vanilla Tesla coil shots, I connected a 6 foot aluminium tube to a motor on top of the Tesla coi. It was a 24 V aircraft control motor with solid reduction gears and a cast alloy casing run from a 12 V SLA battery. This gives a rotation time of about 7 seconds.
The sparks and streamers come mostly from the end of the tube and will trace out a circle slowly. From a normal vantage point the circle is seen end on but is still dramatic on a long exposure of more than the 7 second rotation time. Below is my small 4 inch diameter coil with the rotating breakout point in action. A “Wow” moment.
So lets change the vantage point by climbing on top of the shipping container to get about 11 feet elevation for the camera. The circle effect will be visible.
Above is the elevated view which is even more dramatic in a 2 rotation 22 second exposure. The “ Eye of Sauron ”. Yes, I did stand dead still for the 22 seconds exposure.
Lots of comments on Digg , Overclockers and Hackaday about this.
Above top, is the much larger “Expanding Eye of Sauron” using an 11 foot (3.3 m) extension. Note the sparks to the tree on the right.
Below is me in the spark free zone. I could call this “Seen in the Eye of Sauron” but really that is going too far. The yellowish ring is some masking tape catching fire on the tubing join. Probably not the smartest thing I’ve done since there was no-one else at home so no-one to stop the TC if there was a problem. I lay there waiting watching the supporting masking tape burn away…. Finally the rod had passed, I rolled out and switched off the power and completed the camera exposure.
Above top the setup shown stationary with power off then on. My wooden counterweight is on fire here.
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Photo date: Jan 27, 2007, Feb 02, 2007