The first tutorial to be featured on the Sublime Light is on how to photograph smoke photographs. Photos of smoke are amazingly beautiful, extremely easy to take, and can really take on some interesting shapes. Everyone who looks at a smoke picture sees something different, which is one of the best parts. Where one person will see an angel, another will see a demon. This is a great way to get creative with photography without a lot of equipment commitment.

I’ll show you step by step how to photograph smoke, then how to process the pictures using Photoshop to really make them stand out. So enough already, let’s get started!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• A digital SLR camera capable of firing an off camera flash using a PC connection or a hot shoe cord.
• An off camera flash. This can either be a full studio strobe, or as simple as a battery operated flash connected to the camera using a cable.
• A black background. This can be as simple as a black coat draped over the back of a chair.
• Some incense. Incense gives off the nice thick smoke needed to make these images.
• An image processing application such as Adobe Photoshop. Other applications will work as well, though I won’t give you directions on how to use those. One popular free application is Gimp.

Set up your incense a couple feet in front of the black background, and your camera directly across from that. Then set up your flash directly to the side of the incense so that the light hits it at a 90 degree angle to the camera’s view. Make sure the flash isn’t pointing at the background and it’s not pointing back at the camera. This will cause the background to light up, or will cause flare in the picture. If needed, you can put a home made snoot around the flash to keep the light from spilling away from the smoke. Here’s what it should look like:

Shut off all the lights in the room and close any shades so that stray light isn’t falling on your future masterpiece. Better yet, take the pictures at night with the lights off. Also make sure there aren’t any A/C or heater vents blowing on the area where you’re taking the pictures. Even the slightest breeze will ruin your photos. Consider turning off the air for a half hour while you take the pictures.

Next, set your camera to manual exposure mode. Set the aperture to a medium setting, around f11 or f13, as this will give you a fairly large depth of field so that focus is maintained throughout the image. Now pick a shutter speed below your camera’s maximum sync speed (my Canon 20D has a max sync of 1/250th of a second) and take a test shot. See how it looks and adjust the exposure as needed. Try not to over or under expose the image.

Once the picture looks good, start having fun. Experiment with using objects to disturb the flow of smoke. Try moving the incense stick around. Try blowing puffs of air in the smoke. The more you experiment the more cool photos you’ll get in the end.

You’ll be amazed at some of the pictures you get. They’ll be beautiful and fantastic! But they could be better. In the next article I’ll show you how to squeeze the most from these already beautiful images and take them to the next level. But for now, have fun!

Here are just a few examples of what you’ll get in a raw smoke photo. These three photos are completely unprocessed; what you see is what came straight out of the camera. Beautiful yes, but in the next installment I’ll show you how to really make them shine.

To see some of the best smoke images I’ve taken, visit the smoke photograph gallery.