Smoke PhotographyI think everybody loves to see smoke images & photographers want to expertise in such kind of photography. I wish to share the technique for taking such images. I am not the first one to do such work, you can get lot of information on internet. This is an attempt to share my personal experience with you. Before starting to work on this I must say one needs lot of patience for getting good images. One has to select really good images out of the bunch & dare to throw average images.
Image2: A image showing sound waves illustration representing smoke as sound waves. In actual photograph the smoke was from behind the speaker & only top wave. In processing it has been duplicated & shown coming from speaker. No external elements have been added in the image. My few tips & techniques for capturing such images are as given below: PLACE: You will need a clean place with minimum dust & good ventilation. Insure it is with enough isolating atmosphere, not disturbing the smoke frequently. Small place will get filled with smoke & you will not able to work after some time. BACKGROUND: Use a black background for getting good contrast with the smoke color. The another advantage is that during post processing when you invert image you can get isolated white background very easily. Some images looks good against black (Image 2) & other against white (Image3 & 4).
Image4: Do you see a couple in tango? This was original shot & I didn't duplicated layers here to achieve these figures. SHUTTER SPEED: Use higher shutter speed like greater than 1/160 Sec. This will help for getting sharp images.Use tripod even if you are shooting with higher speed. Sometimes you can get beautiful soft smooth effects images with slightly slower speeds. Handholding camera may help you to tracking faster the various portions of the smoke but you need steady hands. APERTURE: Use higher aperture like f/12..f/18. Since you don't know the exact area for focusing it is preferable to use higher aperture values. ISO: Use lower ISO if possible to get noise free images.It is quiet likely to get noisy images with this kind of subject & higher light requirement.
FOCUS: Last but important use manual focus. Don't move tripod aft Image 5 Image 6
For getting some interesting shapes use other layers with main subject snapping horizontally & vertically. Blend this layers with darken, lighten etc. for getting different shapes. Sometimes you need to clean out some unwanted smoke. The multi color effect can easily be obtained by applying color gradients, but use this layer by blending in color mode. You can get number of possibilities by using different layers with various blending & masking. No limit to creativity. The example is shown in Image 3 & 6. Few days before I was experimenting on such shots & realised that the music can be very helpful for getting variations in smoke shapes. I played my favorite musicians A.R.Rahman songs & got some really interesting images, some of them are uploaded today & other I will upload very soon. Enjoy your favorite music & smoke photography. The only thing you will need is lot of time, patience, people with no allergy of smoke & if married a super calm wife :) If interested here are view my more work on smoke shots: My Smoke Photography Comments
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