Smoke Art

01/01/08

Smoke Art

Part 1 - taking the image

For quite some time now I have been sick of seeing smoke art pictures on the web, usually it was a case of ‘ooh look, aren’t my pictures great’ kind of thing with no explanation of how it was done. It took me a while to find some decent information, but find it I did. Before I go any further, I would like to point out that the guide at Sensitivelight.com is pretty much the acclaimed bible and home of the revival of this specific interest. Graham Jeffery does an excellent job of explaining his talent, however like any guide it is usually only a starting point from which others find their feet. I think the only down point I can see is that he does not go in to detail reference the colouring of the smoke. My many initial attempts before I found this guide were poor. I tried soft boxes for even lighting, long exposures to make the smoke more prominent, nothing really worked right. Softboxes, although great for even lighting, do not put out enough light. Long exposures do not work; as it is a moving subject and the ambient light build up spoils the shot.
What you need is hard-core, unadulterated flash to blast that smoke.

To see this tutorial with all the images please follow this link to it's original location on my other site Smoke -Art

I typically use the following:

• Canon 20D.
• 105mm sigma.
• Canon 550EX (to trigger my main light).
• Reflector.
• Studio light (very basic one).
• Black background of some kind.
• Spoon (or other object to stimulate smoke patterns).
• Incense stick (or other smoke source).
• Clothes peg.
• Optional extra – cereal box of your choice and tin foil.
The exposure settings I have found to work best for me are, 1/250th sec @ f18 - 100 ISO.

1/250th - max sync speed for flashgun, total freeze of subject movement.
f18 - extended depth of field, you cannot pinpoint exact position of smoke.
100 ISO - the smoke is grainy enough without digital noise.

    My main flash for this is a cheap studio light, nothing fancy but it has a slave trigger on it. You can pick these up for around £20 on eBay.
Although small, it pumps out enough light to allow for my exposure settings and light up the smoke really well in conjunction with the reflector positioned opposite.
    Now we have loads of light to play with we have to control it. All guides on the web will say the same – background needs to be black (preferably #0000) and you need to avoid letting any light on the background.
    Now I could have spent £50 on some fancy reflector to prevent light spilling on to my background however, this is where my cereal box comes in. one side of the box covered in tin foil and wrapped around the main light does the job brilliantly. It prevents light spill on the background and reflects more of it on to the smoke.

Ideally, your main light source needs to be to the rear of the smoke, i.e. backlit. Again, this is where the reflector comes in handy.

    Your subject needs to be as far forward of your background as possible; this will help keep it as black as possible. Now you can hold your smoke source any way you want, however after looking at the alternatives I opted for a clothes peg out of the garden.

    As I use a 105mm macro, my camera is usually set up around 80-100cm away from the subject; this allows a little room in the composition for cropping later on.
I pre-focus on the tip of my incense stick then recompose the shot about 4 inches above the stick, again personal preference, I haven’t seen much of interest lower than that.

Important note - focus should be locked of to prevent hunting while you work.

My smoke source is positioned on a piece of kitchen roll to catch the ash, ash can really mess up cloth backgrounds. I also have a few miscellaneous items for stimulating the smoke.

I usually always shoot raw (unless I am pressed for time) I like to added control it gives during post processing, but I have an added bonus. My camera is linked directly to my laptop, so rather than relying on a 2-inch viewfinder or histograms I get a real time view of the image as soon as it is shot.

Another bonus of this, as I can save images directly to PC instead of camera it is like having a 120 GB memory card.

After reading somewhere on the web, I tried it with two incense sticks for added effect.
Experimentation is good for this, if you find something that works let everyone else know by spreading the word.

Once your set, have fun and take loads of pictures.

Part 2 - applying colour

Once you have your images, it is time to get cruel. Depending on how carried away you got you could have taken 200+ images during the burn of one incense stick.
How many images can you edit before it spoils the fun? Personally speaking, at most I would say pick out the five most eye catching to start with (you can always do the others later if you want).

Now I like variety, so I tend to try variations of the same shot, i.e.
• Monotone
• Portrait
• Landscape
• Inverted
• Single colour tint
• Multi coloured tint
Now monotone is pretty much what you get out of the camera (plus a few tweaks) so that’s a given.

Portrait versus landscape, depends on the picture, it may lend itself to one way or the other or may even look great both ways.

Now photography is subjective, many people prefer white background on smoke art saying it has more impact, I personally prefer black but try both.
This is where the pure black background comes in; when you invert the image, you will have a pure white background. Both pure black or pure white should remain unaffected by colour tweaking later on.

Depending on what software you are using, will be the only limit on your creativity. For this guide I will be using Photoshop CS3.
Remember, what is shown here is not set in stone, there are other ways, and this is just my preferred method.
I tend to use adjustment layers where possible, as these are non-destructive editing methods allowing you to always return to your original image.

Single coloured tint I use Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.
Multi coloured tint I use gradient adjustment layer.

Both of these methods will work with either the monotone or inverted image, but for this example I will be using monotone.

To begin then,

Opening our original image, I am shooting raw so I have to go through Adobe’s raw editor first.

Once we have our image in Photoshop we can decide between monotones or inverted (or one of each if we prefer) CTRL+I will invert the image or you can go to Image\adjustments\invert.

That is our initial two images done right there. We can stop now or carry on to colouring.
Remember, if you save now, save as a copy or rename. It is good practice to keep the originals.

Colouring

We will first colour using a single tint.

Going to our layers menu, we select ‘Create new fill or adjustment layer’ then click on ‘Hue/saturation’

Click on colourize.

Then it is just a case of playing with the hue and saturation sliders until we get our desired result.

You can adjust the lightness but this will affect the background as well.

Once we are happy we flatten our image, Layer\flatten image, and save.

Moving on, multi- coloured tint.

As before we will be using adjustment layers, so again with your image open go to the layers menu and select ‘Create new fill or adjustment layer’ but this time click on ‘Gradient’

Just click ok on whatever gradient comes up, before we go any further we need to change our blending mode.

Making sure our gradient adjustment layer is selected, go to the blending mode drop down box and near the bottom select ‘colour’.

Now to change our gradient we double click the Layer thumbnail not the layer mask thumbnail.

We are then presented with more options.

Once you have double clicked the gradient thumbnail, the gradient fill dialogue box will come up. Double click the gradient (ringed in the picture) to bring up the gradient editor.
In this editor, you can play around until your heart’s content changing colours, tones and direction of fill.

Change the settings until you have a result that you are happy with, if you really like it you might want to save it as a unique gradient to use again in the future. Once finished click ok, sit back and admire your art.

Once you have finished basking in your artistic achievement, save it, have a cup of tea and start again with a new unique image.

I have tried to make this as straight forward and easy to follow as possible, but if anyone wants to point out any mistakes or has something to add such as another method of colouring please feel free to contact me at colephotographic@gmail.com

A big thank you to Graham Jeffery, because of whom I was ever able to take these pictures.

Page And all its contents Copyright © 2007 Andrew Cole (www.ColePhotographic.co.uk)