Yes I’ve given it a name. I did Google the word and nothing came up so I’d like to present you with my images of smoke, aka smotography! The setup is easy, black crepe paper as the background, 2 speed lights, both set at 1/128 to freeze the action of the fast moving smoke. Get some ‘josh sticks’ or incense and some blue-tac to keep them in place. I use sweet wrappers for the gels to give the smoke some color. For reference
Once everything is how you want it, light the sticks and get your focus on where the smoke is rising, you might find that patterns begin to appear about half way up the smoke streams but this could be different for you. I set my aperture between f/8 and f/11 to be sure of getting everything sharp. you can blow the smoke to get swirls and other effects. Mostly a bit of luck and timing can get you some beautiful images. Don’t forget to alternate with the sweet wrappers to change the colors and you will get images like this.
I also set the camera to shoot in JPG mode, so the images will save quicker and upload to your computer faster, the only processing usually required is the increase the blacks so the smoke looks like streaks of light on black backgrounds.
It’s worth checking the focus at times because you can lose a bit of detail in the smoke and miss an almost perfect image. This is one I love even though it is slightly out of focus in the body area. Again, just random smoke, I just removed some stray bits and changed the image to Black & White. This image was sent to my favorite TV personality and Author, Carol Vorderman who was kind enough to favorite and re-tweet it for me. So I’ve called it ‘Amazing Vorders’
So give smoke photography a go! the results are always random and you can get some scary, funny, beautiful images. I love it….go on, Push the Button.