So this isn't my best long exposure by far, for several reasons. I still like it, though, and I hope to be able to retry it.

So I started out with welding this September, and I thought that it would be a great idea to photograph welding. Well, after careful consideration, I realized that the welding arc is about as bright as the sun, literally. To get the photo I wanted, which would have lots of sparks traced out, I would have to take a long exposure. Taking a long exposure of a welding arc at close range could easily burn out the ccd in the camera. So I went through the horrid process of buying a filter. Well, apparently, I bought the wrong one, so I kept on having to get a new one, until a couple weeks ago, I got the right adjustable neutral density filter.

I went to class, and a friend of mine named Dom (Dominick) volunteered for the photos. Well, after a half-hour of photography, I realized my mistake: I was taking direct photos of the arc, which totally dominated the photo. I recomposed, and got several photos like this. This was my favorite, but I'm still unhappy with it. You can see the gun moving, so I need to take a shorter exposure. The booth was too bright, so I had to use the burn tool to darken parts of it (I wanted a grungy feel to the photo), until I finally came up with this (also, I had to rotate and crop the photo so that everything looked good :P). I hope to redo it, but if I call it a WIP, I never will.

Any thoughts? Have any of you guys done something like this before?