Experimentation with Smoke

Having been inspired by some great smoke photography images, I thought it was time I gave it a go (Examples Below). The great thing about these pictures is the fact you will never get the same image and some of the interpretations of the images are only limited to you own mind. Smoke photography is not has hard as it seems although patience in setting up and getting the results wanted can take a little time. Here is how I did it. First of all I set up a mini studio using a black backdrop which came around two sides of where I was going to have the inscense sticks for the smoke. This would also help prevent light bouncing off light walls and spilling on to the background. I set up a single studio light to the side of the smoke subject and set this on full power. The reason for the full power was because of the fact I would be working close up, need good depth of field and a reasonable shutter speed. I was using around F16 at 1/250 and ISO 320 in manual mode. But this is all down to experimentation. On the studio light I used barn doors to stop light spilling on backdrop and camera lens. Improvisation all possible here too. It was then a case of playing with the smoke and shooting away.

The set up I used

Once the shots were taken it was just a case of the post processing. This was simple if you have understanding of Photoshop. In simple terms, upload and convert to JPEG. Usue curves/levels to ensure the black background is pure black ie RGB figures of zero. then there are two options. Work as it is with black background or invert the image (Ctrl+I) to make the background white. Smoke colours can then be changed by using feathered selections and then usung hue/saturation (Ctrl+U) to play around. Finish off with any cleaning up of stray wisps of smoke etc and frame, label or publish how you want. Once you get some good shots it is easy to get hooked on it. So those who feel confident, get experimenting and you could end up with some grat fine art images for your walls.