Saturday, January 29, 2011

Day 43- Smoke4 - 23 Jan 2011

Smoke4

Luckily the AFC Championship Game did not hold my interest, because while it was on I decided to try something I've wanted to do for a while: photograph smoke. I'd read a bit on how to best do this, but it still took quite a few attempts to get anything decent.

My technique in a nutshell was to use an ingot as the source of the smoke since it gave a nice steady supply along with an aromatic wood scent. The room itself was fairly dark so I could control the lighting. I shined a bright flashlight from one direction and positioned the wireless flash pointing in from the opposite side.

Then it was just a matter of manually focusing on the smoke while following the smoke with the camera (which was on a tripod), while also pointing the flashlight. The final work was done in Lightroom where I used a graduated filter to modify the exposure and the color.

Even once I got the hang of it there were many many attempts that went right to the trash for each one that I saved. I processed about a dozen, and wound up with six worth sharing. Here are the other five - please click through to see them bigger.

Smoke1 Smoke2 Smoke3
Smoke5 Smoke6

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