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
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