Playing with fire...well smoke :)

Photographing clouds and vaporous things like smoke is an art in itself. I have spent a lot of time photographing the former, but not the latter, so I decided to dabble in figuring out how to capture the smoke as clearly as I could ...I used a solid black background (A Fuzzy Black Blanket :) and placed an incense cone on a table in front of my camera. I have a Nikon D80 with the Nikon Speedlight SB-800 and two side SB-600 Flashes as my basic set-up. I only used the Master 800 and one of the 600's for this shot (although the master flash was pointed away as to not invade the shot) so essentially only the side SB-600 was doing the work in this shot. I placed the flash very close to burning incense so that I would get an intense burst of light right where I needed it. I set the flash to +3 on the master flash and set my camera to 55mm (f/14) 1/100s at about 2 feet away. I set the focus by using the tip of the incense and then raising my tripod so that the cone was out of the shot. I snapped only about 15 frames before my secondary flash's battery died, but it's probably a good thing because I discovered in post-processing that because I was shooting so fast and was relying on photo-shop to pull out the details later, I couldn't see that the side flash was creating spill in within the frame. I plan to mask the side of the flash to avoid that issue in the future. However, I I am waiting for my batteries to charge, lol.

Anyway, in the post processing in Photo-Shop I first created a duplicate layer of the original (I always do this to leave a layer of the original shot) I then bumped the highlight/midtone/shadows to where I like them. Then I set the layer blending Mode to Overlay to darken the black around the smoke. I played with the opacity until I liked it :) I then created a new layer and did a color gradient over the entire layer. I set the layer blending to overlay first, then duplicated the merged image of this new color version with high black intensity and bright colors. I then added a layer of this merged shot on top of the original layered image. I go back to the layer with the gradient and turned it off. I then set the layer with the newly colored image to Color Blending Mode and played with the opacity until it was almost how I wanted it. I saved the file and then duplicated a merge version and closed my original layered file. I then continued playing with Hue/Saturation and Contrast with a little etching and burning thrown in at the end to get the final product. I LOVE THIS SHOT, however I am not completely happy and absolutely want to explore this subject further. So, to be continued...