Colourful Smoke
Mar, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
As much as I'd love to say this was taken in my home studio, truth is, I don't have one. It was my bedroom. A very small, messy, cramped bedroom! But we make do with what we have and do the best we can with it!Time
After a long day at work one Sunday in mid October 2015, feeling stressed and in need of relaxing, I decided to break out my incense. With the last of the Autumn sunset glowing outside my window, I cleared some space on my chest of drawers for the incense holder, and some room on the floor for myself and my tripod. Once everything was in place (and not going to fall over or burn) I lit the incense and had one of the most relaxing photoshoots I've ever had.Lighting
Being new to off camera flash made the initial 10 minutes or so a nightmare for the lighting of the smoke. Also not helping was the bright paint on the walls bouncing the light everywhere! To overcome this and achieve clean, crisp and contrasty smoke trails, I was able to utilise a black fleece dressing gown positioned hanging from a shelf above the chest of drawers (did I say I didn't want anything to burn?!) Then to minimise highlight issues, I was able to construct a "partition" to prevent direct light flashing onto the makeshift backdrop with a magazine. Who needs expensive equipment?!Equipment
The equipment of choice for this shoot was a Nikon D3300 with standard kit lens (18-55mm 3.5-5.6 VR II), a remote triggered Neewer Speedlight 750II, generic Chinese tripod and various items mixed with creative ingenuity.Inspiration
Besides the rough day at work which prompted the desire for a sensory cool down? Life is unpredictable. No matter what level of control we place on our lives, there are far too many variables. Sometimes we just have to go with the flow, and make the most of what happens. Watching smoke move and dance in the invisible breezes in the room remind me of this, and I wanted to "go with the flow and make the most of what happens".Editing
This required a lot of post-processing to clean up the background through brightness masks, cloning out problematic highlights and various contrast boosts. Despite my best attempts of controlling the lighting and flash, in a small room, you will never achieve anywhere near a black background! After that, there was then the colorizing of the individual layers, and then blending the three together using one of the layer blend modes in Photoshop.In my camera bag
I tend to travel light when I go out with my camera. Though we still sometimes have our disagreements, my Nikon D3300 is my trusty steed doing most of the work capturing my images. Being a low budget hobbyist soon to be student, there isn't much of a selection to choose from to take with me, but since purchasing a second hand 35mm prime, that has quickly became my lens of choice. Not only is it small and light, despite the price, the quality of the images it produces stunned me from day one! I will usually try to have my kit lens with me, too, just in case i see the potential for any angles not possible/desirable with a fixed length lens. As I spend most of my time photographing at night, I will also usually have my tripod, a torch and two types of remote release (one programmable which is great for automating composite star trails and a wireless trigger for if I need to put some distance between I and my camera).Feedback
Don't expect perfect results straight off the camera when attempting to photograph smoke. Don't be afraid to move things around and experiment with different lighting angles or power settings, and keep an eye on if the smoke is starting to settle in the air, causing a drop in the contrast of the photos. As with all things in life, getting good results will take time, patience and possibly even some cramps in your legs if you don't sit properly. Have fun with it, and try out different shots to see what works. You just might surprise yourself and create some amazing patterns! Oh, and make sure you use an incense that smells nice!! Nag Champa FTW!
