I have had a fair few requests for information on my Shifting Light photos and so I have decided to put some info about them up here.

The subject matter for my shifting light project has been smoke a light.


Well to be honest, photographing smoke has been around for ages and has really been taken to the next level since digital took off.

What I think people try and do when they try their hand at it is to make it something new, to add a twist, be different and all that. Some people succeed at doing something new but others give up too early.

The only way really to try to do something new with smoke photography is to do the research on it to see what people have done before. I mean all you really have to do is type "smoke" in the search bar here on DA and you'll find hundreds of smoke photos of the sort of thing I have been doing.
All art is a continuation of what has gone before. The only thing you can do is to add your twist to it.

I have tried to do something new with the smoke photography but we all have to start somewhere.
Mine started with this one
I turned out loads of these photos that are similar to this one. But to be honest Ive seen loads of photos just like this done by other people, so nothing new. I'm the sort of person that likes a good challenge.

To produce a photograph like this, all you need a a source of smoke, most people (including me) use incense sticks. They make the house smell of odd stuff but they give the best form of smoke. A camera and a flash or a very powerful light source in a dark room or with a black cloth backdrop.

The light source is best coming from the side or from bottom rear or the smoke. If you use a flash on the hotshoe of the camera and point straight at the smoke all it will do is light up the background (even black cloth) and you wont get anywhere near a good smoke photo. If you can get an off camera flash cord, they are best.

The key to getting good smoke photos is contrast, that is contrast between the smoke and a black background. Beyond that its all a matter of experimentation, try different things. However if you want to get good crisp photos with sharp lines etc etc. Then there are a few things to look out for. Here's an example of crisp lines

You need to be able to freeze the movement of the smoke in some way. There are many ways of doing this. Graham Jeffery was a pioneer of this type of photography and many of the techniques people use are based on this chap. Graham Jeffery, in a commentary, states that he uses an off camera flash set to high speed sync and fast shutter speeds (1/2000 second). High speed sync flash is a setting on most higher end flash guns that enable the use of fast shutter speeds. You may have noticed that when you put a flash gun on your camera you can normally only get about 1/200 of a second (canon cameras) or 1/500 second (nikon).

This would easily be enough to freeze the smoke.

However I would like to offer a different way to look at freezing the smoke which does not require fast shutter speeds and also allows for more possibilities.
To put it simply all you need is a flash capable of a guide number of 42 or higher and a black cloth enclosure. It doesnt have to be special black cloth, I went a got some from a John Lewis shop and paid about £20. All you then need to do is hang it somewhere, Here's mine

All you need to do is set your flash to full power on manual point it at the smoke and take photos. The closer you have it to the smoke the brighter the smoke will be. Have you camera set to manual, ISO 100 and use a small aperture, the smallest you have, then set your shutter speed to whatever. If you are using digital then good because you can see the results straight away. If the smoke is too bright then increase your shutter speed and/or make you aperture smaller and/or move the flash further away from the smoke.

The is no right way to do anything so just mess about with it.
You do not need fast shutter speeds when using flash because the flash will freeze the smoke anyway.
You will only need fast shutter speeds if you are using a constant light, like a torch.

Depth of filed is important, the reason why I say to use small apertures is because smoke tends to drift towards/away from the camera and so focus with never be specific. It also means no auto focus because of lack of light.
You do not need a tripod but it helps.
This photo by my girlfriend, Abi was taken handheld using a black cloth background (no enclosure) and high speed sync. The photo was inverted in photoshop and the colours added using a colour grad in photoshop. (I held the flash for her!).

I wanted to do something different in all of this so I decided to go macro and focus of extremely small sections of smoke to try and make it not look like smoke, but instead to let the viewer's imagination imagine what it is.

This photograph is a macro shot of a section of smoke only 3.5cm wide. The colours were not added in photoshop. Instead I used the flash so very close to the smoke that the colour temp shifted into the very hot blue area and this is what you get.

Because I was not using fast shutter speeds and just letting the flash freeze the smoke, I was able to focus on producing strobe effect photographs.
I used shutter speeds of 1 second in some cases and just let the flash strobe.

This photograph was a 1/10 second shot with a 4 flash strobe @ 50hz. No colours were added in photoshop.

I love the colours that the smoke produces naturaly, but of course when you invert the image, the colours are no longer the same, so to get back those colours again would require colour overlays in photoshop. This can be very time consuming. However they do look amazing and when viewed often look very simplistic and satisfying.

A note on colour shifts.

Colour shifts occur when there is a substantial light fall off from 1 or more different types of light source. This can happen when a flash unit is very close to the smoke and so light falls off in greater proportion because of the proximity of the flash.
If you combine this fall off of light from flash with a tungsten light source (torch or lamp) pointing at the smoke from the opposite direction then there is a clash of colour balance. This produces a blueish tone from the flash and an orangey tone from the tungsten source. (This is assuming the camera is set to 5700K-6700k daylight balance similar to film).

This is how I take my photo's Flash on the right and just beneath the camera, a desk lamp.

There are many tutorials out on the web about this type of photography, I only can offer an insight into the way I take my photographs. I hope this helps and has been informative.... that is if you have reached this far without falling to sleep (sorry) .