Smoke & Bubbles 01
Oct, 2020Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I was visiting friends in Berkeley, California (on a brief vacation from my native Maine) and as usual I brought far too much camera equipment with me. On a rare rainy day there, I decided to do some photos in my friend's basement.Time
Afternoon.Lighting
(see below)Equipment
Among the far-too-much equipment that I brought, I had a Vivitar 285 flash with battery pack (plus a flash meter and a light stand and umbrella) and I had a Nikkor 50mm f1.4AF lens on my Nikon D700 camera.Inspiration
In a number of the many little shops in Berkeley, they sold incense sticks. Most of them had one or two burning putting long plumes of fragrant smoke in the air which were very visible against dark backgrounds in the stores. That inspired me to buy a few sticks and shoot some plumes of smoke in my friend's house (with a dark background in her basement) although my initial idea was to have my friend's hands in the smoke as the subject. When we stopped at a grocery store on the way back from shopping, there was a small kiddie/toy section which had (among other things) jars of bubble-stuff & blowers for a dollar, so on impulse I bought a jar and I combined my two purchases for some smoke and bubbles images. I set-up my flash on it's stand with the white umbrella (with a clip-light to act as a modeling light). My friend blew the bubbles for me into the streams of incense smoke. I opted for using flash since it's duration could freeze both smoke and bubbles and let me use a small aperture (f16) for it's depth of field to get everything sharp. This image was one of my favorites.Editing
Since I metered carefully, my images only required slight adjustment of contrast and brightness.In my camera bag
xFeedback
The Smoke & Bubbles series (as I refer to it) took many shots and was very random as far as what each image finally looked like. It was whatever the flash would freeze. My advice for anyone trying to do something similar would be to experiment, experiment, experiment and see what you get. It may surprise you.
