Photos of smoke - studio setup and lighting

More in this series:
- Photos of smoke post processing
- Photos of smoke photo exhibit

First things first...
Here is a post on how I did the setup in the studio for photographing smoke. Also know as smoke art, artistic smoke, smooth waves and so on but it's still the same.
Some have a black background others are on white.
Common for all the photos (and well I prefer it that way) these photos requires a contrasting background meaning it has to be black.

Now you could start using a flash light, "normal" light, sun light or well just about any old light out there. However I prefer to have nice crisp lines which affects the approach quite a bit.
To get the crisp lines it requires a relatively small aperture. I started out using a f/5.6 or so and that just didn't work out too good. Way to "fuzzy" so here for the second round I chose f/16 (bigger number smaller aperture) to increase the depth of field and thus the sharpness of the photo. Another factor is that smoke is moving and to get the clean lines the shutter speed has to be able to freeze the smoke so I went with 1/250 for my shutter.

With the above settings it means that no flashlight or sun light is going to give you enough pow to actually light the smoke enough. Adding more light also means that it has to be controlled. If light is spilling on the background it doesn't come out as being black and there goes your clean photo.

For this setup I used an alienbee ab800 with the reflector and a cardboard tube to control the light and make sure no light is reflected from the background or below.
On the left side I used a Nikon SB-800 with a home made snoot. For this I intended the SB-800 to have a lower intensity than the alienbee but more about that later :-)



The first three photos above is my initial adjustment shots. I started out setting up the alienbee unit and measured it to f/16. Then adding the SB-800 and measuring it to f/11 (one stop under).
#1 left side is a little to weak, #2 left side just about right and #3 now I think I got them adjusted where I would like them to be :-)

But wait... it ain't over just yet.

Backup and check how the overall light falls.



As you can see some of the left side light is falling on the background which is one thing to avoid.
Here I turned the SB-800 a little bit towards the camera to avoid too much light splashing on the background.



Looks good right?
This is just about how I wanted it to turn out. However.



However my plan wasn't to get a couple hundred shots of my light meter so adjust the view to be a little wider and cover some more grounds... ouch... this is what you call lens flare (you may have to click the photo to get the full size).
This is caused by the left flash pointing too much towards the camera and the light is falling directly into the lens.



Fixing the lens flare is easy. Just turn the flash away from the lens.
But now the light is spilling on the background.... ggg



Ok, adjust the snoot to try and block the light with that. But still there are a little bit too much light on the background soo try again.



Another adustment of the snoot and move the left flash a bit.



Now we are almost there. Finally I moved the left flash out a couple of feet and increased the output. Just about where I want it.
So Now I got my f/16 @ 1/250s and a black background :-)



Let's back on out and see how that looks.



Just a final light meter shot to make sure it's still there.



Soo all there is left is to bring in the incense sticks and fire it up :-)
ohh yeah well btw. if you got some sensitive noses around the house you may want to check with those first or give them a heads up.
Incense can be detected and the scents are many. I am not a big fan but hey makes some nice somewhat controllable smoke that can be used for creating photos.

When the incense stick is smoking the smoke will most likely "just" rise straight up and give you a white line.



To avoid the white line going straight up in the air or well to actual create something a wee bit more interesting you can modify the smoke stream. This can be done with just about anything like... your hands (ps. here goes the disclaimer... don't touch the glowing incense stick.... it's hot!!!)


Or you can use a spoon (another disclaimer... don't use the nice silverware for this. Might get you in a bit of trouble).



And here is a test shot without any objects in the way ;-)



All that's left is in post processing. More info on this will be available in my photoshop section (http://photoshopandsuch.blogspot.com/) but here is a little teaser for one of the options you have with the smoke photos.




More in this series:
- Photos of smoke post processing
- Photos of smoke photo exhibit

A weekend in photos

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

With busy work weeks and always a million things to do so much gets pushed to the weekend that even those get busy. Kind of a bad circle since this is your time to get back on top and relax a little.

But sometimes there is a little corner of time here and there to get around to the wanna do stuff too. Like this weekend :-)

Other than getting some household stuff done what I wanted to do was to spend some time with Emma and go to the park and play around for a bit. But we also got around to playing in the studio for a bit.

Emma is good at making faces, posing and dancing around. All up to the point where she looses interest in photos and exclaims "that's it. No more photos of me...". But it works out and we have fun while playing in there.

Initial setup of the studio Emma helps setting up the flash (kicker). She is learning about the different lights and setting the output of the flash.



The patience isn't always too long so sometimes initial setup has to be done before she gets in the studio to play around. But then there are others that can help out adjusting the light. Good ole Angel bear :-)



When using studio lights one could start out by guessing a setting and adjusting the camera exposure based on the histogram. It's just not always this approach is fast or very accurate. That's why I got the light meter and Emma is now ready to get the exposure values.



Initial settings are kind of guess work based on what worked last time. But sometimes when the readings come out yieeeks... (uhhh dad... don't think this will work)



Alrighty... Enough playing around in the studio.
This time we went off to Crockett park where there is a nice lake. Turns out they got a playground there as well and Emma was excited as could be.



We were doing a little driving too :-)



And Emma could walk across the bridge all by her own... yeah that's pretty big :-)



The playground had two areas. One for the 2-5 years old and one for the 5+ years old. Of course both of them had slides but in the summer heat... yeah well you would get kind of toasted on those...
So after trying the slide once we went on to one of the favorite activities... Digging... I don't know why but it is always a winner.



If digging can be done with a stick and you even get to through a little sand around... pure bliss...
But as you can see on the following photo it was a hot summer day and we got overheated after a couple of hours. Well I did have a little sense and actually remembered to bring a juice box for Emma and a small water for me.
However I got one sip of the water and Emma emptied the juice box and the water in no time. The extra water we bought at the store was going fast so even though we had fun we had to pack up...



Ohh yeah I did mention something about a lake... right?
Well here it is (part of it).



And a few birdies were floating around on it too.



In our garden we got a couple of plant beds which seems to be overwhelmed with weeds. This year Emma and I tried planting some wildflowers but somehow the weeds came in faster than the wild flowers.
A couple of weeks ago I tried tearing out some of the weeds to get a little sun to what would hopefully turn out to be wild flowers.
Maybe that's what did it or they were just a little slow. But they finally started to show up.



The flowers may be few but they come up full of colors.



well some of them are full of color. But they are all different sizes and we sure do like them :-)


Just before dinner time and we got about half an hour to have a little fun in the studio. This time I got the kicker setup again with umbrella and all.
Mom had been doing Emma's hair so it amazingly still looks good even though it was done more than 2 minutes ago.



We always get this pose... It's called "look at my blue eyes"... I know I know... but it's all good fun.



Sometimes it's even possible to get Emma to have a face that doesn't include a weird expression. How do you like this one?



Of course we are not always equally impressed by the jumping and weird sounds dad is making behind the camera and we come up with a "hmm what's that all about" look.



Not to forget our "Look at my blue eyes" look :-)



So just for the fun of it let's finish off on the good side and have the curious look showing off a bit of very nice hair. Yep in ten years time (or sooner) I will be in sooo much trouble and have a lot of talking to get done. But for now it's about toys, puppies and fun stuff like that :-)



After being at the airshow Emma is still fascinated by the blue angels.
Here we are in-flight, landing, fly-by and wooshing up in the air real fast. Yep that sure is tons of fun :-)


Last but not least...
Recently (after a big storm that got a hold of the umbrella on the deck) Emma has been slightly a lot concerned about storms, rain, thunder, lightning and wind. So we spend quite some time taking about clouds, rain and all that stuff.
Yesterday after taking a bath some dark clouds were moving out with white puffy clouds peeking out behind them.

Now it will probably make more sense to you if you have seen or read the Charlie and Lola books or watched the Charlie and Lola show on tv.
One book we have read about a million times is the I will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato which is a story about how Charlie is getting Lola to eat her food.

Anyway getting to my point. Emma looks out and exclaims: "Maybe tomorrow I will eat some cloud fluff. But only from the top of the cloud because I don't like the dark bottom".

In Charlie and Lola mashed potatoes isn't mashed potatoes but cloud fluff (Lola does not ever eat mashed potatoes).