Blowin' Smoke

Llywellyn

I've been teaching myself how to photograph smoke, something I find both fascinating and frustrating. Here are some shots from my second attempt.

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Thanks for stopping by! :thumb

black mamba

Very interesting. I wonder if you'll ever be able to catch it with all the smoke within the picture frame......leaving nothing to lead your eye out of the picture. I like what you've done.

Llywellyn

black mamba wrote:

Very interesting. I wonder if you'll ever be able to catch it with all the smoke within the picture frame......leaving nothing to lead your eye out of the picture. I like what you've done.

I tried that with my first attempt, but being zoomed out so far I found to be much less interesting. You miss the cool curls and details (or I did, at least):


Also, being that far out captures the "haze" the smoke dissipates into, which is much more murky and less interesting than the sharper streams closer to the source (in my opinion). This is why I zoomed in for my second attempt--I wanted more sharp ribbons and less haze.

Still playing around with it. Eventually I'm sure I'll find a compromise I'm super content with. That is if the overpowering smell of incense in my office doesn't drive me mad first.

Thank you so much for your comments!

pathfinder

Cool, Kerry.

You gelled you flash for a few of these?

Llywellyn

pathfinder wrote:

Cool, Kerry.

You gelled you flash for a few of these?

Thank you! Actually, the color work I did in post, except for the blue-on-black one in my second post, which was from a custom white balance setting of 3600K. For the rest I used a Hue/Saturation layer set to Colorize as that was the method recommended in a how-to I read before trying this.

Skippy

Llywellyn wrote:

I've been teaching myself how to photograph smoke, something I find both fascinating and frustrating. Here are some shots from my second attempt.
Thanks for stopping by!

Kerry these look Great
What do you use for your source of smoke?

The two shots with the white backgrounds look like pen and ink art.

Your doing a wonderful job at learning this technique,
I've never tried it myself .... Well Done ! .... Skippy
.

Llywellyn

Skippy wrote:

Kerry these look Great
What do you use for your source of smoke?

Thank you, Skippy! I was using two sticks of incense in my first post. The example in my second post was with only one stick of incense. My office still smells of it, days later. :giggle.

Pexi

You know Llywellyn, I owe you one. You've given me inspiration, I think I'll try this too, 'cause your shots are so beautiful. I specially like number 2 with black background :smooch!

What did you use as a light source?

Thanks for sharing these!

Llywellyn

Pexi wrote:

You know Llywellyn, I owe you one. You've given me inspiration, I think I'll try this too, 'cause your shots are so beautiful. I specially like number 2 with black background :smooch!

What did you use as a light source?

Thanks for sharing these!

Thank you for the kind words! I used my Alien Bees B400 strobe for this. More importantly, I read this how-to article before attempting anything: http://www.photocritic.org/artsmoke-photographing-smoke/

The trickiest part was severely controlling the spill of light. It took so long to get right (me being a somewhat non-natural-light newb), I haven't taken the set-up down yet because I want to keep trying--and I don't want to jury-rig it all together again! :giggle

Good luck, and I look forward to seeing what you do.

Dogdots

Cool

I will have to try this sometime.

DaddyO

These are nice.
You've put another fun thing to try on my very long ta do list.

saurora

Llywellyn wrote:

Thank you, Skippy! I was using two sticks of incense in my first post. The example in my second post was with only one stick of incense. My office still smells of it, days later. :giggle.

I gather we are talking "home office" here as opposed to a place of employment? These are cool Kerry. I really like the high-key look of the white backgrounds, but it seems #2 with the dark really shows off the curls the best.

Llywellyn

Dogdots wrote:

Cool

I will have to try this sometime.

Thanks. And it's slightly addictive.

DaddyO wrote:

These are nice.
You've put another fun thing to try on my very long ta do list.

Thank you! It was on my list for a while, too.

saurora wrote:

I gather we are talking "home office" here as opposed to a place of employment? These are cool Kerry. I really like the high-key look of the white backgrounds, but it seems #2 with the dark really shows off the curls the best.

Hee, I work from home, so it's technically both. Thanks for the kind words. I prefer the white backgrounds, but I need some better smoke to really make use of them. I'll find the right combo eventually!