So, I’m finally doing what I said I would, and uploading a couple more examples of smoke photography that I’ve processed in Photoshop. And yes, I do recognize that smoke photography is in no way an original idea, and some of my methods for processing them are derived from examples I’ve seen. This was mainly an exercise to improve my technical skills, and really just to see if I could do it!
I’ve seen a lot of examples of smoke photography lately, and wanted to give it a try myself. A pretty good amount turned out well, and I’m going to do some photoshop experimenting with the color on a few, but here’s the first of the set. This one only has minor edits done in Lightroom.
Here’s a diagram of the setup I used to get the shot:
The setup was pretty basic. I had my camera level with the smoke against a black background. I used a Canon Speedlite with a snoot to light the smoke, at a 90 degree angle to the camera and at the same height. The important thing is to light only the smoke, and to not let any light spill onto the backdrop. I shot with a wide angle lens and cropped the images in Lightroom (shot at ISO 100 so that the extreme crops still look good)
After my Photo a Day/365 project ends on December 31st, I’ll have more time to update this blog, which will include the rest of the smoke shots!