Smoke

We recently got into a habit of burning some incense in the evening. It took actually a while before my husband finally got me interested into photographing the smoke they are producing. I remembered Jeff Revell doing a feature on his blog some time ago, but his focus was on Photoshopping it into colorful pattern. I needed some more technical advice on setup, best – for Nikon and SB-800 Speedlight. Deciding it cannot be that complicated, I went to do it myself after all. Besides setting up the black background, turning the flesh into Remote mode was the easiest task. I used Nikon D40x on-camera flash as Master, at the same time covering it up so no front light was placed on the smoke. Tricky, but hey, this is an amateur camera. With some trial and error I got the flash settings right, and spent additional time for figuring out how much to the side the off-camera flash should be placed (left and waaaay back) and how to cover it so it is not putting ANY light on the background – the effects are stunning.