How to capture stunning smoke photography

The following experience will help you get the most impressive and magical picture of smoke.

by Son Pham

Although smoke photography was not a prominent topic was much loved but when shooting with the wealthy creative photographer , smoke will become a beautiful and very attractive subject. In this article, let lava360 share with you will some simple steps when shooting a smoke photography.

To take a photo with smoke , the photographer need to looking for a dark room, the light can be stopped by using more curtains if necessary but the photographer should also pay attention to ventilation issues for raising the room because the smoke is too dense in a closed room can cause you to suffocate.

What you need

• DSLR or ILC (interchangeable lens camera mirrorless) camera .
• Tripod.
• Backdrop, it is best to black, it may be a black wall or black cloth hanging on the wall.
• Flash.
• Reflector.
• Smoke creator.

Step 1: Setting up context

Firstly you need to use black cloth to form the background to the context in which you will take a smoke photography. Find a table or a flat surface to place smoke creator. You should pay attention to a fire situation. Also up for the position should be away from the backdrop some reasonable far, is best about 1m.

Step 2: Place Flash

The key point to take smoke photography is needed light passes through one part smoke or projector at an angle and not to light up the background. To do that the photographer should put flash points towards the source of the smoke. The flash can be activated via wifi from the dSLR or cables.

You can also set the flash up on other things to get the proper location, or if necessary, holding.

Place the reflector plate or foil sheet positioned directly opposite with flash.

Step 3: Camera setting

Put DSLR lens and setting manual focus mode and look at the live view. Using the advance focus mode to make sure the entire area from the source of the smoke emanating out the surrounding are in focus.

After the issue focus has been processed, switch to set manual exposure mode. To start taking smoke photography, it is best to set the ISO 100 or 200. The aperture should be around f / 8 to f / 11 and shutter speed is 1/125 or 1/160, enough to freeze the motion of smoke when illuminated by the flash.

Step 4: Creating smoke and adjustable lighting

After context was arranged, then you proceed to making smoke. As mentioned above, please pay attention to ventilation issues regular room. Turn off the light from the bright lights and any other source and started shooting with a DSLR and flash trigger.See the image to adjust the exposure accordingly. No rules no set right or wrong, but it all depends on the eye and your specific setup.To really ideal image should ensure not to light up the room wallpaper, leave it as black as possible. View histogram to check and adjust if necessary.

You may also need to adjust the location and capacity of the flash when through the smoke. If the image is too blurred, you should adjust the lighting a little ease. Most of the examples in images taken at approximately -2EV and -3EV.

If you find there is too much light onto the backdrop, you should use a snoot for Flash to control the direction and shed light levels.

Step 5: Create shape

When the room was covered, the wind can not entered into the room, so smoke will usually go straight upwards. To create interesting effects from the perspective of photography, you can create some form of smoke.To do so you can gently fan the smoke with a piece of paper.

Step 6: Edit

After completing the capture of smoke, to make your photos have really interesting effects – something that is difficult to achieve if only taken with the camera, you can edit more by image processing software.

– Use Photoshop software, or there are many other image editors allow you to increase the contrast context to highlight the smoke than the black background. To raise more efficient, color inversion effect would bring more unique image. To do it in Photoshop, you do it: Image> Adjustments> Invert.

– If you do not want pictures of smoke only one monotonous color you can “paint” also using Photoshop software. You go to Image> Adjustments> Hue & Saturation and adjust.