Heh everybody, I have a great Photography tip for you if you like creating abstracts with your camera and having some fun, Ed Verosky sent me this tip and how to do it. Ed is a great photographer and if you like this and would like to purchase some of his books there are links at the bottom of this blog.

 Smoke Photography Tutorial

I recently tried my hand at creating some intriguing photographic abstract art; incense smoke photography. Several of my friends at the About-Photography Group posted some of their own smoke images, so I thought I’d give it a try and came up with the images shown here.

The following is a short tutorial on how it can be done:

There is more than one way to do this, and some of this is optional. You’ll need to work in an area that is free from moving air. A little is ok, but you don’t want a fan or open window nearby, or anything that will prevent the smoke rising up from the incense to be blown away before it gets a chance to rise vertically for the pictures.

MATERIALS

Here is a list of things I gathered to create my smoke images:

    Incense
    Match (or lighter)
    Small table and incense holder
    Camera, normal or telephoto lens, and external flash *Tripod
    Dark background material (black seamless, poster board, cloth)

NOTE: Take precautions when working with matches, lighters, and burning incense so that you don’t start a fire. You don’t want to work with these items around flammable materials. As soon as you’re finished, make sure you douse the incense in water. Don’t leave it out or throw it in the trash.

SETUP & SHOOT

    Setup the table or other support for the incense. You can use a dark material in the background to help visually isolate the smoke in the shot. Make sure there will be enough distance between the incense and the background so that the background fades to black in the exposures. For my setup, a black cloth was used and positioned about 4 feet behind the incense.

    Setup a camera on a tripod. You’ll want this positioned in line with the smoke as it rises off the incense. I shot the images shown here with a 50mm lens about 3 feet from the incense. My camera settings were ISO 100, f/stop 16, and shutter speed at 1/250 (flash sync).

    Setup the external flash (off-camera). I positioned my flash about 2 feet to the left of the incense and slightly behind it. I did this so that it pointed slightly away from the background. You don’t want to illuminate the background with spill off light from the flash, so you can also modify it with a flag or snoot. I used mine without any modifiers. You can trigger the flash any way you like (PC cord, TTL, radio trigger, etc.). How you setup and use the flash isn’t as important as simply getting it to illuminate the smoke.

    Focus for the smoke. If your camera is configured to autofocus whenever you press the shutter button, you’ll have to set it up for manual focus, or use an alternate focus button. It can be hard to focus on the smoke each time you take a shot. Hold an object just above the incense stick, where the smoke will be, and focus on that. Leave the focus there for your actual shots.

    Take some shots. Light the incense and wait for some interesting smoke to rise into the frame. Experiment by disturbing the air around the smoke with your hand or your breath. The idea is to create interesting smoke patterns and get some shots to work with. When you’ve gotten several shots, preview them on your camera’s LCD. If you’re happy with them, import them into your computer.

POST-PROCESSING

There are several things you can do to enhance the smoke patterns including mirroring and colorizing. Here’s what you can do to create the effects shown in these images:

    Open an image in Photoshop and adjust contrast by using Curves or Levels in order to make sure the background is very dark or black and the smoke has the look you want.

    Create a Duplicate Layer of the image. Then flip the duplicate layer with Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal.

    Change the blending type of that layer to Lighten or Screen.

    Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer above the other layers. Check the Colorize box and adjust the color of the smoke.

    Slide the top smoke layer, left or right, over the original layer until you see a pattern you like. Crop to your taste and save the image.

Again, this is only one way to approach this type of project. For example, you might use natural light coming in from a window on one side of the setup. If the background is dark enough, you should be able to isolate the smoke in the image. Also, post-processing can involve different coloring methods (you can use multiple colors and blending types). I’ve seen some beautiful inverted images, where the background can be turned white. And you can mirror the original image with vertical flips and other variations. Some original smoke patterns are so beautiful that they don’t need to be mirrored or colored at all.