January 26th, 2010

Aside from the occasional cigar, I don't smoke . . . but I find the dynamics of smoke captivating. Every once and a while I get the urge to photograph smoke and this morning was one of those times. I got out the flashes, raided our candle supply and set up a black backdrop. My usual technique for capturing smoke involves incense, but I wanted to get a subject in the frame this time, hence the candle - the only problem is, blowing out the candle to get a nice plume of smoke. If I blew too hard, the smoke would grow to thin by the time it came back in frame - so I channeled my childhood hero, MacGyver and fastened together two straws to make a more direct 'blow out' and it worked like a charm!

Captured in full manual mode with the Nikon 50mm prime at f/8 and shooting at 250th of a second. I lit the candle from left and right with two Nikon Speedlights and fired them off with an on-camera commander unit. ISO is down to 100.