I saw this technique yesterday in Popular Photography, and I knew instantly that I wanted to try it for this challenge.
Used 2 cones of incense. I used jasmine scent, although any scent will do ;) This was lit with 3 off-camera flashes: 2 Sigma 500's and a Nikon SB24. I fired the Nikon with a PC sync cord, and the sigmas slaved optically. The flashes were outfitted with a snoot made from craft foam to concentrate the beam of light. To get the colors, I used pink tissue paper over the Nikon, and two plastic kids cups on the sigmas (blue and orange. They were all aimed at different heights of the smoke plume. I had to adjust the power of the flashes a few times to get the correct balance of light intensities. Taken completely in the dark, with a black velvet pillow as a background.
Post processing: converted from Raw, with no adjustments during conversion. Cropped to remove very bottom of smoke trail. Added a curves layer (S-shaped) to bump up contrast. Added channel mixer layer to boost color. Flattened image, changed to 8-bit. Resized to 640 pixels. Cleaned up about 5 hot pixels. Slight dose of USM at small radius. Saved for Web.
I have high hopes for this one. It turned out exactly as I had envisioned, with one exception. I didn't expect the wide range of colors (like the purple). I guess that's light mixing in action.
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This is so good. The minute I heare "multiple light sources" I see in my mind perfectly executed shots like this with different hues and colors. Congratulations on your well-deserved ribbon!
My favorite for this challenge. Pretty, well lit and focused. It's so interesting to see all the shapes and forms and find recognizable things in it...or is that weird? :)
Smoke Signals
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