Hi everybody, welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on Adoramatv.
Today we're gonna take
some incense and make some really
amazing smoke photos...
these are really really fun
and simple to do.
You can do these in your home studio,
or in a garage or just pretty much,
pretty much anywhere...
and you don't need a lot of gear to make
this happen.
So let me walk you through
how I've set things up, so the first
thing you need is some kind of black
background, this can be a this.
It's a five in one reflector, just a black reflector
here a subtraction panel, you can use
black seamless paper, or just anything
that's really really dark.
you need that as your background..
the second thing you
need is some kind of flash,
I'm just using a speed light,
you can use a studio strobe whatever
you have it's going to work,
and then whatever camera you have.
Doesn't really matter which lens that
you have, you just want to make sure that
you can fill the frame with this black
background, that's the important thing,
and that you can focus on the smoke
that's in front of the camera.
So I'm using a Canon 16 to 35 f/2.8,
l but a 70-200mm would work,
a 16 to 35mm... just about anything is
gonna work on your camera, and if you
have a point-and-shoot...
it's also gonna work pretty much the
same way, well let's talk about the flash...
because that's probably the most
difficult thing to set up... and if you
don't set it up correctly, you're not
going to have a nice black background,
which you need to make these work.
So what I've done is...
I have my flash to the side...
so it's coming in to the side here,
and I need to make sure that the flash
doesn't hit the lens of my camera, and I
need to make sure it doesn't hit this
background...
so I can just use maybe some
cardboard to put it on the sides, just
anything to block that flash, but I've
got a rogue flashbender, so I put that on
to my flash ear, and that makes sure that
this flash is going to come straight
this way...
So my smoke is going to be
coming up right here,
this flash is going to just hit this section
and nothing else,
and so I'm just illuminating this
pocket right in front of my lens,
which is pretty cool.
So flashbender works great...
if you don't have one of those you
can use just about anything,
just to make sure that you block the light
from hitting on the background,
and on your camera's lens...
alright once you have that
set up we need to meter this light,
because if you set your camera to TTL
metering...
the camera is going to try to
expose this black background correctly,
and what's going to happen is this is
going to be overexposed...
we don't want that,
so to make this work correctly you
need to set your Flash and your camera
to manual mode.
So I've set my camera to
manual mode.. ISO 100 to keep all the
ambient light down.
I'm shooting at an aperture of f/8,
that makes sure I have
enough InFocus because the smoke is
going to be tricky to focus, and my
shutter speed is 1/200th of a second ,
which is the sync speed of this camera.
As far as my flash...
I have it set to manual mode,
I'm remotely triggering that with the
radio trigger, you can use a radio
trigger or a cable if you need to do
that, and then I'm going to meter this.
So what I'm going to do here is,
I'm using my Sekonic light meter...
I'm going to point this to my flash here,
and just trigger this really quickly,
you know...
make sure that that is turned on.
so yeah let me do that...
really fast that guy is on ok...
so now I've triggered that, and
that is metering at f/8, and so that's
going to be just fine.
So what I have found out though that
whatever setting this meter..
so I've set this at f/8 I have
metered this a f/8..
I need to crank up my flash...
usually one stop maybe, one and a
half stops brighter than my meter is
saying, because of the way the smoke is
to overexpose that smoke just a little bit.
You got to play with this...
so what I'm going to do is,
I'm going to adjust my flash really quickly...
just to make sure that that is a little bit
brighter than I said.
So it said 1/8 -I'm going to go up to
1/4 power here.. once that's set, I am all
good, so just play with that.
You'll see on the back of your screen...
or in a computer as you're shooting...
what the correct level is...
all right now, we have everything set up...
all we need to do is light our insense.
I've got a little piece of wood here that my
friend Keith drilled out some holes on...
and we just stuck it on a light stand,
you can use whatever,
it doesn't really matter - a cup,
or glass, something on a table...
it doesn't really matter,
you just need to have some incense.
so I will light this up... the
other thing I need to do is focus this
and to focus this, it's a little
tricky, I'm not going to use the auto
focus on my key.
if I do that it's going to there we go..
We got some smoke, it's gonna try to
focus on the background, so instead what
I'm going to do is I'm going to come
over here...
I'm gonna put my lens in
manual focus, and then I'm gonna see
where this smoke is, and put my finger
right above it, then I'm gonna focus on
my finger, and then I know that since my
finger is here... my camera is focused on that.
I'm gonna get this smoke coming straight
up in focus, and that's probably the
easiest way to do that.
Alright... so now we have everything set
up... let's start
shooting, and then we'll show you how to
process these in post-production, to make
them really stand out.
So I'm wiggling my fingers in the smoke
here to create some turbulence... that's
going to help that smoke look a little
bit better, the other thing you're going
to need to do is take a lot of photos,
because smoke is unpredictable, and so
you need a lot of options, so you might
want to shoot a hundred, or two hundred
photos, so that you get the right smoke
shape.
All right so, I'm gonna keep on
shooting here... the other thing you can
try is adding multiple sticks of incense,
to get multiple streams of smoke you can
just play with this...
you really want to do a lot of different
experiments before you hop over into
post-production so I'll shoot a few more,
using a couple of variations, and then
we'll head over to Photoshop.
now that our photoshoot is done, we can
hop on to our computer and do some
things with these images..
The cool thing is, it doesn't take very long
and you can get some really stunning results.
So we're gonna start in Lightroom...
I've already loaded all these images in...
I've already zipped through them,
and flagged the ones I like...
so what we're gonna do here is...
I'm just going to show you these
really quickly, I've got one that was
shot with multiple sticks of incense...
I think that's pretty interesting,
and this one here looks sort of like a
flower... that could be interesting, the key
to this is.. you want to shoot a lot of
different images so that you have a lot
of options in post-production,
because maybe you can print these out
and make some really cool art
to put on your wall...
but even if you don't shoot a lot of the
smoke, you're not gonna have a lot of
options to really mix and match these in
the future.
Alright so what I'm going to do is...
I'm going to take this one...
that looks sort of like a flower here...
I'm going to go into the develop module
now in Lightroom...
you can do some things that
are pretty simple, so you can change the
color temperature to make that blue...
you can change the tint to you know
make that a little bit punchier...
but to really play with these...
we need to go over into photoshop.
So what I'm going to do is... I'm
going to right click on this image...
and I'm going to say edit in Adobe
Photoshop CC 2019...
and then we can do some really
cool stuff.
All right the image is in Photoshop.
The first thing I want to do
is... I want to change everything from a
black background, and a white smoke, to
the exact opposite.
To do that we need to create an inverse
image... all you have to
do is hit command or control, and hit I
on your keyboard... boom...
it totally reverses everything, it's like
an x-ray... kind of a negative effect... once
we've done that, now we can do the same
thing that we did before with our
sliders to change the color temperature
and stuff, so in Photoshop go to filter,
and we're going to go to the Camera Raw
filter... that's going to give us a
familiar interface, if you're coming over
from Lightroom now we have our color
temperature here... so we can make this a
different color.
So I'm going to make it
blue, you can make it red or orange or
whatever you want... just play with that
slider, you can play with the tint, that's
also going to change the background a
little bit.
If you do that so just play
with these...
there's no right or wrong
answer once you get something that you
like, you might want to add some clarity,
you can really crank that up, take the
texture up, you can change the highlights
and the shadows and the contrast...
do whatever you want...
there is no right or wrong way
to do this.
So you can zoom in here... and
see exactly what you're getting, you're
probably going to want to crop these
before you print them, or add them as
screen savers, or whatever, so just sort
of zip around and see what you're
getting.. until you get something that you like.
That's all there is to it, so I'll
hit okay and now we're gonna have an
interesting image.. let's do one more very
very quickly... so over to Lightroom I'm
going to go over to this image here..
that was a multiple sticks of incense edit in
Adobe Photoshop...
now that's in Photoshop
I'm going to double click the hand so we
get a nice large view again, commander
control I ... boop - it reverses that..
I can go into my camera raw filter,
once I have that it's going to allow me to
change that...
so sorry did that wrong... filter...
Adobe Camera Raw filter, now we can
change, make this red or blue or green, or
whatever you want to do.
I always like to add a lot of clarity to this
to really make it punchy, you can add a lot of
contrast to this, add some, take some
contrast out... it doesn't really matter.
Play with the exposure to see..
if I take this exposure down,
we're getting a lot
more out of this image, which is really,
really cool... we can change our white
level it doesn't matter..
play with these and you can see that
we're gonna get some really fun
interesting results and
that's what this is all about.
Get in your studio ...
light some incense, take some
photos hop over into Lightroom or
Photoshop whatever your choice is play
with them create some
art that belongs to you.
Thank you so much for joining me
for this episode of Exploring Photography...
don't forget to subscribe to
AdoramaTV, that way you don't miss a
single episode..
I want to mention that
because in the future we're going to
take these images and then we're going
to apply them to some stuff that we
shoot in the studio then some advanced
Photoshop stuff... it's gonna be really,
really cool, you don't want to miss out
on that, so make sure you turn on the
bell so you get notifications of all the
episodes coming up...
also follow me on
Instagram I'm posting all kinds of
behind the scenes stuff... in fact I just
posted a story today of this very video
and how I created it
... so you don't want to miss out on that.
Thanks again for joining me,
and I will see you again next time.