Firestarter
No smoke without fire, right? Well actually you can have smoke without fire. Enter the incense-stick.
Took a break from editing wedding shots from last weekend and had a go at the classic smoke against black background shot yesterday. I’ve seen this on numerous blogs and several great photos of it around the web and thought I’d give it a go. The setup is simple; incense stick, snooted strobe and a black backdrop. Then all you have to do is sit around waiting for the smoke to make some interesting abstract shapes.
I spent about 15 minutes on this as it was getting late, but spending a bit more time is probably wise as you can experiment a bit more with composition. Also, the smoke is quite unpredicatble so you might get some pretty amazing shapes there. I love the spirally thing in this image, but I’m not content with the top part of the image.
This image was shot with Canons cheapo 50mm prime and I urge you to check out the picture in 1280×800 on flickr to see some great details in the smoke. The sharpeness in this lens is amazing.
The slight blue/green hue in the smoke is courtesy of Lightrooms split toning tool but I’m sure you could accompllish something similar with gels on your flash.
I also did an inverted version of this which gives you a great image against white background, but i went a bit overboard with some color overlays on it so I basically ruined it :p
Tomatoes
In the about section here on the blog I state that I don’t limit myself to automotive photography. But looking at the posts from the last couple of months you might think otherwise seeing as almost all of my posts have been related to cars in one way or the other. About time to put my money where my mouth is and show you guys something else then.
From time to time I wander over to David Hobby’s Strobist Blog for both useful lighting tips and inspiration. Some time ago he had this article on Food photography which inspired me to give it a go. When I tried it the first time shortly after reading the article I failed miserably, and the shots went straight to my recycle bin.
Not content with this I had to give it a go again and yesterday I bought some tomatoes and set up my DIY-studio at home. The result can be viewed below. Not exactly the same as David’s shots as he has a nice shine/highlight in the acrylic his tomatoes sits on, a shine I struggled quite a bit to get rid of. (note to self: read instructions one extra time before venturing into something new). But although a bit different from David’s shots I still feel my shot came out good.
The small picture here really doesn’t do the tomatoes justice so please View Large On Black.
Picture is shot with a Canon 430 EX positioned high above an directly behind the subject.
For the Norwegian Strobists out there, who might have the same hard time I had sourcing the acrylic background, it can be found and bought at Plastkompaniet in Oslo
Sneak Preview
Here’s a little sneak preview on a project I’m working on. A client saw one of my earlier pictures of a Jada Toys die-cast Volkswagen pickup and wanted something similar to frame and use for his sons bedroom. He supplied me with another Jada Toys 1/24 scale Volkswagen bus and told me to have a go at it. I’ve since then acquired yet another model and will be shooting the three of them separately for framing.
I set up the studio yesterday and brought out the models. Here’s one of the outtakes.
The color on the red bus is a bit off and I’m still not happy with the way it looks against the black backdrop. So I will be shooting it again tonight.
As always, clicking the picture will open my flickr photostream where the picture is available in high resolution