Since I published my smoke photos I have had many people ask
about how I photograph particles and smoke. Because of this, I decided more
than any other photo, this should be my first in detail ‘how 2’ post. I love
photographing smoke as its random nature means that you will never capture the
same image twice.
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| Smoke Example |
The Kit:
Essentials:
DSLR
Speedlight or strobe with remote triggers
A Black Background (I use A1 black card)
A particle emitter (I use incense sticks for smoke)
Optional:
Softbox (I used my homemade one)
Black card or other light canceller (I used the black side
of a popup reflector)
Tripod
Adobe Photoshop (to colour/ invert the smoke)
Method
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| Lighting Setup (Top down) |
Due to the smell of the incense sticks I use to create the
smoke, I decided to take my photos in the utility room at my girlfriends. This
meant I could use a worktop as well as to not smell the house out. First I
Whitetack my background card to the wall behind the worktop. I then placed the
incense on wood to stop it burning the worktop. Placing the incense as far from
the background as possible will make the lighting easier just so long as the
background still fills the frame. I used a tripod for my camera as autofocus
will never really work on the smoke (I just focus on the incense and lock the
focus). You can also work handheld but a tripod will stop you having to
re-focus. The hard bit about photographing smoke is the lighting. You need to
light the smoke without lighting the background this is why having your
incense/smoke as far from the background as possible will help. Left is my
lighting diagram and below a zoomed out photo of my set. I
used my homemade soft box here to better control where my light falls as my soft
box has a band around the front edge. I also used a black popup light canceler as the
flash was reflecting from the white wall and lighting the background.
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| My Quick Setup |
I believe my Speedlight was set at about ¼ power but flash
setting and camera aperture will need a little trial and error. When lighting anything
with a Speedlight like this remember that your flash becomes your shutter and
will freeze the motion of the smoke. Your cameras shutter speed will also only affect
the exposure of areas not lit by the flash. Because we need our background
black its best to set your camera shutter speed at your fastest sync speed
that on my kit is 1/200 of a second.
Post Production
After you have captured your images, pictures like this
allow you to get creative. I would try inverting your image colours so the
smoke appears black on a white background. This can be done by selecting Image-adjustments-invert
on Adobe Photoshop. I would also try creating a solid colour layer (colour of
your choice) above your smoke layer and then going through the layer blending
modes and see how it colours your smoke.
Hope this helped
AlexAndrews
Over the next few months I am going to be showing some
simple studio and on location light setups. Before I start on in-depth articles
I thought I would add a quick bit about what equipment Will be required. Over the
years I have had amazing success with cheaper equipment so along with a list of
the equipment I will use I am going to add links to the budget products I have used. 
