Whats smokin

[TobyMac]

Incense stick smoke creates the most amazing shapes


IMG_0330.50 by Tobias Weber, on Flickr


IMG_0327.50 by Tobias Weber, on Flickr


IMG_0311.250 by Tobias Weber, on Flickr

[Mike Buckley]

Very, very nice abstracts! It would be difficult to select a favorite and I'm glad I don't have to.

[gilliebg]

Great shots; I remember trying to do this and failing miserably. I shall try again!

[TobyMac]

Thanks guys Gillie you are the second person that I have inspired today It took me quite a while to get it right but when everything comes together the results are pretty awesome

[kdoc856]

Toby,

That is so cool. What kind of lighting and placement do you do for this?

[Plumcrak]

I might be the third person inspired by your work...very impressive!

[TobyMac]

Thank you

Kevin its actually very simple, I used a black cardboard for the background with the incense about 30-40cm from it, then I had a speedlite to the left and slightly behind the smoke, the speedlite was triggered by my built in camera flash, to avoid the on camera flash interfering I made a piece of cardboard that deflected the flash away so it only triggered the speedlite. As long as there is some sort of light lighting up the smoke from behind you should be able to make a nice and dark background with th e smoke clear in the foreground, because I was using a flash I could use a very small aperture assuring relatively good sharpness throughout because focusing on moving smoke is extremely difficult. Playing with the whitebalance of the camera will also change the color of the smoke. I also did a bit of work in Photoshop to add some detail and edit out some stray smoke that didn't seem to fit and also to smooth it out a bit because the smoke always looks grainy even on very low ISO's. Hope that helps Happy to answer any more questions

[kdoc856]

Thanks, Toby

Will be experimenting with this in the near future

[Dave Humphries]

Doing this is great fun Toby, you got good results, well done.