Smoke Photography

Do you want cool background photos that you made yourself with just smoke? You can learn it basicly and you can make it at home easily.

Step 1: Materials

1) Black background material. Cardboard or black screen.

2) Something to illuminate smoke. Like a desk lamp.

3) A professional camera. To take high quality photos.

4) Something to make smoke. I used ground coffee.

Step 2: Preparing Environement

Stick the black background to a wall. Then put a small bowl in front of it. Cigarette may make more smoke but I don't smoke so I put ground coffee on it. Then to illuminate the smoke use a lamp but not to illuminate black background use another black cardboard to obstruct the light that goes to background.

Step 3: Taking Your Photo

Put your ground coffee in bowl then burn it from it surface it will smoke till it finishes. But as I said cigarette may smoke more. Then close the curtains and lights except our illuminator. And take your photos from different angles. I used a Canon 700D. İf you can, take your photos in RAW format to edit better. And I recommend to illuminate the smoke with high powered lamp because of to use the camera in a lower ISO value for avoid from grainy background.

Step 4: Editing Your Photos

Open your photos in Adobe Lightroom and in develep section at the right side there is a graduated filter button select that. And you can select their colour from the bottom of it. Then drag your mouse on photo to use filter. You can use a few different colours to make it better. İf you want to make the background in white colour press (Ctrl+i) to invert their colour to make it more interesting. So your masterpiece is done!

Comments

[gasp]

Yay! I've been trying to find a good/easy way to do this for a while. This seems to fit the bill pretty much exactly. Thanks!

[sarawelder]

i had no idea about burning coffee grounds. thank you!

[Caewou]

You need ground coffee ı mean like coffee in powder then with lighter burn it from its surface it will make smoke.

[sarawelder]

thanks for the clarification

[jlathem56]

Ah this is so much easier than the old school way I use to do it. 40 years ago I had to use colored gels and 2 or 3 photo strobes.

I like this way much better.

Thanks for sharing. :)

[Caewou]

Yeah it is so easy and fast to do.

[Swansong]

That looks really neat!

[Caewou]

Thanks for your comment.