Ever since I started photography, I've been trying to play around with this. I think this is my fourth set and fourth attempt in creating the Art of Smoke. I normally do this when I have nothing to shoot or my mind is playing or I am bored.

Today I thought I would do something different to my usual approach with photographing and post processing smoke as an art subject.

I ended up shooting around 150 and because I was aiming for a certain texture and shape, only 10 of these passed. Also, a pack of cigarettes was consumed in just a matter of an hour and a half. I smelled like an ashtray.

WARNING: CIGARETTE SMOKING IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH.


How to do it?


SET UP/PP

You will need source of smoke - cigarette, incense

1. Dark Background. I used a black cloth.
2. Lights should come from the side. I used my Canon 550 EX with ST-E2 trigger. If you have Nikon, use whatever is equivalent. You dont' need the ST-E2 anymore.
3. Set exposure. My setting was f/5.6 shutter speed 60 ISO 100/800 but I play around with it, it's just the basic set-up
4. Pre-focus (manually)
5. Shooooooooot away. It's hard to get the best image, trust me. Smoke's a difficult model!!!

Then:

1. On photoshop - invert image so that background becomes white (from black)
2. Adjust colors using hue, saturation, etc. Adjust levels for hightlights
3. A little dodge and burn helps
4. Unsharp mask
5. Gaussian Blur for the glow, but it depends on the shape
6. Experiment!!!