fun with smoke

MommyOf4Boys · Jun 2, 2006

Took a bunch of shots of smoke today. My second time attempting this. I will have other photos to post later after I finish going through them...here are a few of my favorites:

1.

2.

3.

RoRoCo · Jun 2, 2006

Very graceful. Could you tell us a little more about the setup were you using to capture them?

MG TF 135 · Jun 2, 2006

Nice, really arty. The sort of thing that would look good on a large canvas.

Alex06 · Jun 2, 2006

How cool! #3 looks like a musical key. I like it.

MommyOf4Boys · Jun 2, 2006

RoRoCo said:
Very graceful. Could you tell us a little more about the setup were you using to capture them?

RoRo, I used my 50mm 1.8 @ F/2 1/250 200ISO (still a lot of grain, but you will have to work with your lighting, etc to get it just right - the best photos come out when the light is really really close to the smoke..the first shot up there took about 60 shots to get just right w/out grain and blur). I set up a black board on my dining room table and had the window open behind me to let in a good bit of light. I then lit a stick of incense (gives off great smoke for these shots). I used a light and held it right under the line of smoke to illuminate it. This sometimes will take two people, unless you get get the light situated just right under the smoke without having to hold the light. Once I got a bunch of shots, I opened them up in Rawshooter and corrected the white balance and boosted the shadow contrast all the way up. Then into Photoshop to edit. To get the colored smoke, just invert the image and open hue/saturation, click on the colorize box and adjust the hue the way you want it.