Photographing smoke

There are times when a photographer needs some smoke. Want to make a candle look like it’s just gone out? Smoke. How about a steaming cup of coffee? Smoke. Make the cigarette or cigar look realistic? Smoke. Add some magic to a fantasy portrait? Yep. Smoke!

Here’s a quick tutorial on making photographs of smoke’s feathery goodness.

Incense

I’m not much into incense. Sure it smells good. That’s not how it gets me happy. It looks amazing. A single stick of incense is good for several hundred fun, wispy images.

Lighting for smoke

Side light is great for photographing smoke. I use a Dynalite studio head with a 40 grid on the reflector. Placed to the side of the camera at 800 watt seconds, it provides enough light to shoot at f/16.

This gives a large depth of field so the smoke is sharp even as it moves away from the point of focus. Make sure than none of the light hits the background. A totally black background is critical for “the trick” to work.

After shooting the smoke, move over to Lightroom’s Develop module. Hold down the Option (or Alt on Windows) key then click and hold the Blacks slider. Move it to the left until the background is completely black.

The trick

Choose the smoke images you want to lay into an existing photograph. Move them into the photograph in Photoshop. Change the blending mode from Normal to Screen. The black background magically disappears leaving only the smoke behind.