Expert: Mike Fulcher - 8/19/2006

Question
Hello mr. mike fulcher, my name is frank and my girlfriend and I have been taking a lot of photos and both of us are considering a career in photography, mostly we have been photographing each other around motorcycles and classic cars, we have been having a lot of fun doing this and she even won a contest/competition of a picture of me, now we want to try to figure out how to make actuall steam come off our clothes, we froze my shirt and headband solid ice and then i put them on we went out to the motorcycle and poured extreamly hot water over me to get a steaming effect, and the steam never happened and i got scowlded a bit. what are we doing wrong and can you give me another idea how to do this... please.

Answer
Ouch.  I think to achieve your desired effect you'll need to reverse the steps.  What you'll want is for the water to evaporate from your person, then quickly condense into tiny droplets to produce your steam effect.  So start with the hot water pouring, then get yourself into a freezer.  If you don't have a freezer, then you'll have to stage these events outside when it's the coolest.  The hotter and more humid it is outside, the hotter your starting water will have to be, which could result in more scalding.  Let me know if this works out for you.