I don't quite know why, but "Gone Girl" was the first thing that came to mind with this image... do you see her?
For "get pushed" this week Mike Gifford challenged me to do some smoke photography which, he'd rightly pointed out, i'd never tried before...
Sooooo... excellent challenge! I needed to figure out off-camera lighting (including preventing unwanted shadows from showing up in the background) and where to buy incense... I also needed to learn to do things with layers in PSE that I'd never tried before...
The bits I'm still struggling with are:
1. how to adjust the background in PSE to be perfectly black (or white) without impacting the image...
2. how to focus on the smoke... all the tutorials made this sound easy - but I really struggled with this and ended up with many out-of-focus images...
3. How to make the colour more impactful and vibrant... possibly i just need more white smoke in the image? i do plan to play around some more tomorrow night so happy to hear any suggestions for improvement!
@mikegifford - tx for the push... great brain exercise to figure out how to make this work, and lovely distraction from the real and rather annoying world ;p
I see her!! I love this...purple is fantastic! I've really been wanting to try this, but haven't yet. What did you end up using for your lighting? Whatever you used, it worked great!!
@tryeveryday tx Michelle... i used a cheap studio light on the left to help camera focus on the smoke... off camera flash on tripod on the right... this seems to be the general approach from what i found out in googling, and the youtube video mike gave me a link to...
I like this as well! Another way to get the colors more vibrant is to duplicate the bottom layer and play with the blending options. I think I also tried the lightening slider when adding the hue/sat layer.
@mikegifford yepp... played with lightening slider as well... don't know about "blending" options... did i mention that i have never actually bothered to learn PSE? anything cool i know how to do i learnt from someone on 365 ;p
@northy If PSE allows you to select different blending options, try them. As mentioned, duplicate the bottom layer and instead of using normal, try multiply, screen, lighten, etc. You'll be amazed!
I definitively see her! Fantastic shot, and incense, great idea, might give it a try myself one of these days. Can't help with tips on layers unfortunately, I don't have photoshop...
Hi Northy, here is a great website explaining (with tutorials) how to do just about anything in PSE. There is a tidbit on how to make the back ground white or black, as I came across it once but couldn't find it again last night when I was trying to make my bg white for the shower gel shot...it's there somewhere though. http://everydayelementsonline.com/2011/01/understanding-layer-masks-in-photoshop-elements-and-photoshop/
I tried this the other day and didn't even get an image! I think you've done a great job. It's something I need to try again but the set up looked a bit complicated to me xx
I see the figurehead of ship. :)
By the way, when I tried this (and I was following the Gavin Hoey tutorials with the side lamp), the only lens that would reliably focus on the smoke was the 50mm. The kit lens was awful to put it mildly.
@humphreyhippo hmmm - how were you handling focus? Auto or something else? And what aperture? I have an old kit lens which is more glass than plastic and I think the issue was more how I was lighting the smoke than anything else...
@humphreyhippo also I wonder whether 50mm will take me in too close - I was using 38mm yesterday and not sure my flash cable wld let me pull back far enough to work w the 50... But I'll def give it a shot tonight if I have time...
@northy I got the best results with the 50mm, which was largely on auto-focus - handheld. With the kit lens, I either used auto-focus, but focused on the tip of the incense stick, or I put the camera on a tripod and manually focused on a point using a pencil - like I do for water drop shots and then took lots of shots.
Either way, I found the success rate was fairly low.
This was one of the better ones: http://flic.kr/p/aL1ihR
I had the desk lamp very close - looking back at some of the reject shots, I can see where I caught the edge of the lamp in frame.
The flash was on the opposite side - so desk lamp on the left, flash with cardboard barn doors on the right.
@northy I got myself a wireless remote flash trigger from eBay (a Hong Kong special...) and it's probably one of the best things I've ever bought - photography-wise. Had so much fun with it. It was about £25 I think.
This is one on my list that I'm not in a hurry to try, 2 half hearted attempts at smoke photography that failed miserably. So I am IMPRESSED! well done!
Been a while since I've done one of these - I'm looking for some incense though - I've had to use candles before which are not quite as effective. Great job Northy (and the other 3 are cool too) I see the Woman!
October 27th, 2012
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Go here for a reasonable definition of the Blending modes. Hopefully PSE allows you to do this.... http://emptyeasel.com/2008/10/31/explaining-blending-modes-in-photoshop-and-gimp-multiply-divide-overlay-screen/
By the way, when I tried this (and I was following the Gavin Hoey tutorials with the side lamp), the only lens that would reliably focus on the smoke was the 50mm. The kit lens was awful to put it mildly.
Either way, I found the success rate was fairly low.
This was one of the better ones: http://flic.kr/p/aL1ihR
I had the desk lamp very close - looking back at some of the reject shots, I can see where I caught the edge of the lamp in frame.
The flash was on the opposite side - so desk lamp on the left, flash with cardboard barn doors on the right.