Firstly, it should be known that I was using dollar store incense and thus had to shoot outside, for fear the smell would be to disgusting inside. Luckily, it was not a breezy night.
I shot these pictures with my Nikon D90, my 18-55 kit lens and the built-in pop up flash. I set the incense holder on the rail of the back deck after the sun had fully set. I focused on the tip of the burning incense, locked the focus, and fired away.
Here is the straight off of camera shot. You can see the incense stick over in the bottom right corner. My settings were as follows:
Shutter Speed: 1/40
Focal Length: 55mm
ISO: 200
Aperture: f/5.6
Flash: Yes
So, in my opinion, this really only needed a simple crop:
But... if you want to get fancy, you can have all the fun you can stand in post. I did this with the free Picnik suite through my Picasa Web Album:
This is the cropped version of the original. I simply inverted the color and tinted it a kind of greenish color. But the possibilities are endless. I'll probably breakdown and get some kind of a black backdrop, but for now this works well. :D
here are a few more shots from last night's adventures:
Oh, wow! These are lovely, and mysterious. I especially like the purple ones.--Rachel Hoomom
ReplyDeleteBeautiful. It's interesting how smoke can look so fluid - Wendy Redfern
ReplyDeleteGreat work! That's exactly how I learned to do it. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks ladies!! Really appreciate the comments. I have since broken down and bought a little black backdrop for smoke photography (for a whopping ninety-four cents!!) So, I plan to do some more!
ReplyDelete