Smokin' Photography
My previous post (available here) detailed some of my process for taking photographs of smoke. Today I thought I'd give a few more examples.
This shot titled Smokin' Sax has been rotated just past 180 degrees. When I saw the lined up spirals of smoke I immediately thought of a saxophone and attempted to line up the smoke to appear as one. As I said earlier, the color is added in processing, so I chose a gold color to further enhance the similarity to a sax.
On this one, I held a cup over the smoke stream for about 10 seconds then quickly removed the cup and took the picture. This created the curls at the top. In processing I then inverted the image to create the white background and added the rose color.
This picture of a smoking gun barrel was created by holding an unloaded (and magazine removed) Glock handgun over the incense stick and letting the smoke drift upward. The smoke worked its way through the gun and out of the barrel. I chose to leave the smoke its natural color of grayish white.
On this one, I allowed the smoke stream to calm down to just a single column and then gently placed a spoon over it. The smoke then accumulated under the spoon briefly before coming out around the edges.
Similar to the above shot, I placed the fork into the stream and allowed the utensil to disrupt the smokes flow. This one was also inverted to create the white background.
Here's the same shot as above, but without the invert.
And lastly, this shot was rotated 90 degrees clockwise to enhance the presentation. With the invert and the rotation, I felt it looked like silk blowing in the wind.
There you have it, my first few attempts at smoke shots. I used simple incense sticks that I purchased for under $5.00. For a background I used a black sheet and then placed my light source (a Canon 430EX strobe) at about an 80 degree angle. Feel free to comment with any questions or comments.
This shot titled Smokin' Sax has been rotated just past 180 degrees. When I saw the lined up spirals of smoke I immediately thought of a saxophone and attempted to line up the smoke to appear as one. As I said earlier, the color is added in processing, so I chose a gold color to further enhance the similarity to a sax.
On this one, I held a cup over the smoke stream for about 10 seconds then quickly removed the cup and took the picture. This created the curls at the top. In processing I then inverted the image to create the white background and added the rose color.
This picture of a smoking gun barrel was created by holding an unloaded (and magazine removed) Glock handgun over the incense stick and letting the smoke drift upward. The smoke worked its way through the gun and out of the barrel. I chose to leave the smoke its natural color of grayish white.
On this one, I allowed the smoke stream to calm down to just a single column and then gently placed a spoon over it. The smoke then accumulated under the spoon briefly before coming out around the edges.
Similar to the above shot, I placed the fork into the stream and allowed the utensil to disrupt the smokes flow. This one was also inverted to create the white background.
Here's the same shot as above, but without the invert.
And lastly, this shot was rotated 90 degrees clockwise to enhance the presentation. With the invert and the rotation, I felt it looked like silk blowing in the wind.
There you have it, my first few attempts at smoke shots. I used simple incense sticks that I purchased for under $5.00. For a background I used a black sheet and then placed my light source (a Canon 430EX strobe) at about an 80 degree angle. Feel free to comment with any questions or comments.
10 Comments:
These are so beautiful! Thank you also for explaining your process, I found that to be quite interesting! I appreciate your creativity.
These are great! When you color in PP do you adjust hue & saturation forthe whole image or did you apply it to "paint" different parts
Thanks Michelle and Steve for the comments.
@Steve:
On the images, I first adjusted the levels to ensure that the black was truly black (R0,G0,B0). This involved some cloning to remove any items that were not truly black (particles in the air reflecting light, background reflections, etc.). I then just adjusted the saturation and hue of the entire image. I suppose you could mask and paint, but with the background being true black (or true white if you've inverted the image), the hue/saturation adjustment doesn't effect it at all.
Is this what they meant by a smoking gun in all those detectives and police shows?
I like these shots...but it seems like you have been having too much fun playing with smoke. It causes me to think of all those silly sayings like "where there is smoke there is fire" or the lyrics of the song "smoke on the water". So when are you going to do some smoke shots of these???
i would definitely love it. good job!
Great job.. I like the one with the gun as well..
I did some experimenting with smoke as well, and it is a lot of fun indeed..
Have a look at my results on www.lumendipity.com/blog
You can see some of my pics here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76442934@N00/sets/72157594482411277/
Great! Well done!
wow great work with the smoke. the one with the spoon definatly turned out cool too.
(seen on photofriday)
these are beautiful!
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