Smoke and Mirrors (Westy 52)

Playing smoke this week;

I set-up a joss stick against a black backdrop.

It was lit by a single SB-900 firing into a softbox - The trick was to try to light the smoke, without spilling light onto the background.

To do this I aimed the softbox to the side, almost slightly behind the smoke - Being careful not to cause lens flare (a bit of trial and error!)

With the smaller aperture needed to capture the plumes of smoke properly (focusing is tough to say the least!) you lose quite a bit of light.

In order to freeze the motion of the constantly-moving smoke, you need quite a fast shutter time. I aimed for 1/125 or faster.

I shot in full manual to get the smoke as bright as possible without blowing out the highlights.

Taking the photos is just the start in this project - Photoshop is where they are transformed.

I cropped the image, rotating where I think it suited, and then used levels to adjust the contrast of the images.

Some work well with the Black background (as the main image), some I Inverted to give a black smoke of white background look (like this example)

To colourise the smoke, I used the hue and saturation tool. You can apply the colour to the whole image in one go, because your white or black background will be unaffected by this tool.

I prefer to colour parts of the image by making a selection of a part of the smoke, with feather set to 200px.

These are very much 'first attempts' but I pleased with how they went.