She Moves in Mysterious Ways

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/60 second, f/8, ISO 50

Inversion

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/50 second, f/8, ISO 50

Smoking Glock

Featured today is another capture from a recent stock photography shooting session. Since a previous image I have of a smoking handgun sells fairly well on iStockphoto, I decided to add a few more similar shots to my portfolio.

The pistol in this capture is a 9mm Glock with the magazine removed and no ammunition anywhere close by (safety first!). To create the smoking effect I held the gun's open magazine well (in the grip) over two burning incense sticks and let the smoke flow up and out of the gun. The majority of the smoke exited through the barrel, but some of it came out of other openings. This helped to create the illusion of the gun having just been fired.

For lighting, I placed a softbox up and to the right of the subject. I used an umbrella diffused light set to half power to the left to add fill. This was obviously shot against a black background. The lighting worked well to accentuate the gun's features along with the smoke. Very little post-processing was required.

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens - 1/60 second, f/8, ISO 50

Ghostly Glow

After all of the attention my post showing photos of lightbulbs burning out received last week, I thought I'd post another one. This capture shows the burning bulb a moment later than my earlier shots. The mushroom looking cloud (we'll ignore other similarities) has floated up and is beginning to dissipate in this version. It is interesting to note that in nearly all of the photos the smoke plume is drifting to the right. I would guess that subtle airflow in the room is the reason.

To photograph this, I fired 8-10 shot bursts with my camera at 5 frames per second to increase my odds of capturing an interesting photo. I manually calculated the exposure after taking a few test shots. The only post processing I have done to this image is cropping, noise reduction and contrast adjustment (all in Photoshop CS2).

Links:
Previous LeggNet.com Post
Story on Digg.com
My Smoke Shots on Flickr

Canon 30D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/640 second, f/4, ISO 100

Spontaneous Combustion

(Canon 30D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/640 second, f/4, ISO 100)

What you are seeing is a capture of a lightbulb in the process of burning out. To create the shot, my friend Harley and I removed the glass enclosure of a standard household lightbulb (while leaving the innards intact) and powered it up in a pitch black room. The result was an immediate burn-out, which we were all too ready to photograph. The red hue on the smoke was added in post-processing.

Here's one more I did inverting the shot:

(Canon 30D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/1000 second, f/4, ISO 100)

For detailed instructions on making a similar shot, visit DIYPhotography.net.

UPDATE: For those requesting (here and on Digg), here is the top shot with minimal adjustment (contrast, crop and noise reduction):



(Canon 30D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/640 second, f/4, ISO 100)

Smokin' Photography

My previous post (available here) detailed some of my process for taking photographs of smoke. Today I thought I'd give a few more examples.




This shot titled Smokin' Sax has been rotated just past 180 degrees. When I saw the lined up spirals of smoke I immediately thought of a saxophone and attempted to line up the smoke to appear as one. As I said earlier, the color is added in processing, so I chose a gold color to further enhance the similarity to a sax.



On this one, I held a cup over the smoke stream for about 10 seconds then quickly removed the cup and took the picture. This created the curls at the top. In processing I then inverted the image to create the white background and added the rose color.




This picture of a smoking gun barrel was created by holding an unloaded (and magazine removed) Glock handgun over the incense stick and letting the smoke drift upward. The smoke worked its way through the gun and out of the barrel. I chose to leave the smoke its natural color of grayish white.




On this one, I allowed the smoke stream to calm down to just a single column and then gently placed a spoon over it. The smoke then accumulated under the spoon briefly before coming out around the edges.




Similar to the above shot, I placed the fork into the stream and allowed the utensil to disrupt the smokes flow. This one was also inverted to create the white background.




Here's the same shot as above, but without the invert.




And lastly, this shot was rotated 90 degrees clockwise to enhance the presentation. With the invert and the rotation, I felt it looked like silk blowing in the wind.

There you have it, my first few attempts at smoke shots. I used simple incense sticks that I purchased for under $5.00. For a background I used a black sheet and then placed my light source (a Canon 430EX strobe) at about an 80 degree angle. Feel free to comment with any questions or comments.

Purple Rose

UPDATE: I've posted more smoke shots on my follow-up post.

This past week, one of the readers of my blog (and frequent commenter) Genevieve from the Prairie Bluestem blog emailed me a link to an article about photographing smoke. The article was quite interesting so I decided to give it a try.

The first hurdle I had to overcome was finding incense sticks in Sandy Utah. After visiting several businesses suggested by my wife Michelle, I found some on clearance at Pier 1 Imports. Incense in hand it was time to start shooting.

To create the images I used an off camera flash positioned at a 90 degree angle to the camera and shot against a black background. I placed the incense on a stool and let the smoke drift upward into the shot. I then did various things to disrupt the air and create the patterns. Capturing the smoke required a bit of experimenting with exposure. I ended up shooting stopped down to f/22 with a shutter speed of 1/250 (the fasted my 30D can shoot and still synch the flash). I had the camera on a tripod and used a remote release to trigger the shots. Since this procedure involved the use of more than two hands, I enlisted the help of my frequents assistants Missy and Sarah (my daughters).

The only manipulation I did in Photoshop was to adjust the colour and a bit of cloning to clean up the edges. This particular shot was also inverted, causing the background to become white.

You can see some more examples of the shots on my Flickr account. Click here to view them.