Smoke
Fire has a hypnotic quality and its easy to lost in its beauty. Smoke has a similar effect and it wasn’t until quite recenty that I found that its become a form of art. As I had nothing else on today, my office admin is up to date, I thought that I would have a go myself. I enjoy working in the studio but it isn’t as much fun as playing in the studio…
The technique is quite simple, black background, one flash unit, a tripod and a digital camera. Oh you might want a few incense sticks to provide the smoke… I know that the background here is white but it did start out black, honest. The black background just provides a contrast to the smoke. The flash is placed to the side of the incense stick at 90° to the camera. I used a makeshift snoot to contain the light and stop it from hitting either the background or entering the camera lens. The exposure was 1/160th sec @ f8. The lens was manualy focused and left on manual throughout the shoot. Light the incense stick and take lots of exposures. The image was inverted in P’shop (Ctrl + I) to give the white background. The image was retouched to get rid of dust spots and the colour adjusted to give the pink/purple hue you see on the end result.