What attracted me to smoke photography was the way you could create something amazing without loads of expensive equipment.  I will try to break up each part of the photography process to make it easy to follow.  There is a chance I will break this into two parts: The Photo and The Editing.

The Photo

Setup

The setup for taking the photo is pretty simple.  You only need a few basic supplies to capture a great photo.  This is what you will need:

• Camera (I know, I know…)
• Tripod
• A black background.  Now this does not have to be something amazing.  I have seem photos of people setting up a full studio set, when its not necessary.  I used a $2.00 matte black foam board, but I have seen people use a stretched out black shirt, which will work just as well.
• A light source.  The best light source is an off camera strobe or speedlight.  I used a canon 430ex with a Pocket Wizard attached to fire it.  I have read that a desk lamp or some other constant light source will work, but I have yet to try it.  If you don’t have Pocket Wizards you can always use a sync cable.  If you don’t have something to fire you flash of camera, this would be the one thing I would suggest buying.  Besides making this process so much easier, it will always open up a new world of photography.
• Smoke, of course.  There are plenty of ways to get smoke, but the best way is by using incense.  It has a steady burn, its thick, and it smells.

Now to put the peices together.  I set everything up on my kitchen table, leaning my black background board against something.  About two to three feet in front of my background I have my incense.  Incense is cheap, so buy a pack and a holder.  I placed my camera on a tripod at the end of the table, only a few feet away from my incense.  Try not to put your camera right up against the smoke, because I can’t imagine that is good for your camera.  Use a zoom lens or a good narrow prime lens.  I used a 17-50mm lens, which might be kind of wide, but its the lens I like, so get off my back.

The flash is the most important part of the process.  I have read about people putting their flashes or strobes under glass tables, at an acute angle, and other weird spots.  What I did (and what seems to be the standard) was put my flash on a crappy tripod at 90 degree angle from the camera, pointing towards the smoke.  Something that could become a problem is not controlling the light from its source.  If you light source is hitting a wide range of objects, it could splash onto your background, which would not make it black.  What I did was narrowed my flashes light burst to 80mm and added a snoot to it.  A snoot is a way to control where your flash is going.  You could go out and buy one of these for your flashes, but lets be honest.  You’re cheap.  Its true, but so am I.  I took a cardboard box, cut out a big square and wrapped it around my flash to get the size and shape right.  I then cut it up, taped it together, and put it on my flash.  Your flash or light source is whats going to be stopping the action.  You’ll be shooting it either complete or almost complete darkness, so this little bit of light will be just enough to freeze the smoke.

Taking the Photo

Okay, so you’re pump. I know, its exciting.  Calm down, though.  Now we have to take the photo.  This is how I went about setting up my camera and flash.

Focusing - It sucks.  Its hard to do in complete darkness, so this is what I did.  I set my camera to a narrow aperture, around F.10.  This allows more of the photo to be in focus, which helps when the smoke starts to blow a foot forward and back.  To focus I lit the incense and manually set my focus.  You could also use your auto focus, then switch back to manual, to make sure your camera does not try to re-focus.  Of course, I did this with the lights on.

Now with your focus ready to go, turn your flash on and take a few shots.  You light meter on your camera is useless.  I set my camera to the maximum sync speed my flash allows, which is 1/25o.  Now, turn the lights off and keep taking photos, adjusting your flashes power until you get something you like.

The trick to this is to just keep taking photos making adjustments as you go along.  Keep an eye on your flash, don’t let it spill on to your background.  Once you start getting the image you like, blow the smoke around a little.  Grab a spoon and cup some of the smoke.  Play with it and have fun.  Hopefully, this is easy to understand.  If you have any questions send me and email, leave a comment, or talk to me on twitter.

Send me some of your photos, I would really like to see them.  After I let this sink in for a while, I will post a blog explaining how I go about editting the photos.  Have fun and send me some photos.

I know my site is mainly filled with photography and fimmaking stuff, but every now and then I want to blog about other things and today is one of those days.  I am writing this post today mostly out of annoyance and to celebrate the soon-to-be-released Left 4 Dead - Game of the year edition.  The content of this new edition has been available on Xbox Live for a few days now, but the full new disc is not available until May 5th. I wanted to go over some of the basic of the game that seem to be overlook or just ignored.  I will start off with a few things that should be common sense, but seem to get lost during game play.

Etiquette

I don’t know why, but manners seem to get lost in the world of online gaming.  If you want people to actually want to a play game with you, you need to have some basic manners.

• DO NOT yell, cough, breath, etc. into the mic. This can be really annoying, especially when other players are talking and nobody can hear them.  I know people think it is hard to not breath into the mic, but I use a mic everyday at work, as a director and if I can manage not to do it, then so can you.
• DO NOT try to kick people from the game who are new to it.  This was really annoying the first few times I played.  Instead of someone helping me out and teaching me the basics, I just got kicked.  It takes a lot longer to learn the game that way.
• Friendly fire sucks.  It sucks even more when people do it on purpose.  There is no need to do this.  You are already trying to kill something, why kill your teammates?

Gameplay Tips

There are a few things to know when playing as a Survivor.  Using these tips can help your team advance and keep your team from hating you.

• For starters, get a headset.  You can get one of Ebay for really, really cheap and it makes all the difference.  Chances are you bought this game for its amazing online mulitplayer game play, which means you have to interact with others.  There is nothing worse than a person new to a game that you cannot help out, because they can’t hear you.  When you do get a headset, make sure you follow the rules I mentioned above.
• Stay together.  This should be common sense, I mean the name of the game is Left 4 Dead, but it seems every other game I join, there is someone who thinks they are so good they can run ahead of everyone else.  If you haven’t noticed, when you get attacked by a special infected there is no way to escape unless you have a teammate.  When playing on expect difficulty, it only takes a few hits and you are done for.
• When you come across advanced weapons, see what everyone else is getting.  If everyone running around with four auto-shotguns, everyone is going to be reloading every 10 shots.  Make sure someone has a the AR and others have the shotgun.  The AR has a high-rate of fire, which the shotgun does not, but the shotgun is powerful.  When you come across a Tank, both weapons will be needed.
• There are a few tricks to handling a horde of infected.  Try to get into a corner or at least back up against a wall.  If your back is against a wall you don’t have to worry about zombies come from behind.  If you can, get all your teammates to get at the end of a hallway or in a corner together.  You can bottleneck the zombies and chances are you won’t take any damage.  You need to remember that when you are doing this, friendly fire is something to watch for.  If everyone is standing in a tight group, make sure the people in front are kneeling.  If they are not kneeling, they will be shot in the back of their head and nobody likes that.
• Molotov Cocktails and pipe bombs are also really important.  Don’t throw them whenever you feel like it.  If you were really being surrounded by zombies, would you use all your weapons at once? Probably, but this is a game, so don’t.  If you are down a hallway, throw a Molotov and watch as the zombies come out the other side of that wall of flames as flaming infected.  If you don’t think you will your Molotov, then don’t use it.  Try to hold on to it for the Tank.
• There are a few tricks to handling a Tank.  Get the Tank into an open area.  Every player to run backwards from the Tank while laying down fire.  Have that Molotov I told you to keep?  Hit the Tanks feet and set that dude ablaze.  When I play on Expert, I like to set him on fire and just have everyone run.  Sure, you backtrack a little, but you don’t die.  The Tank will eventually die, due to the fire and you can just run right back.  If you have a teammate with some skills using the sniper rifle, tell him to get it goin’.  The sniper rifle will cause the most damage, but please, PLEASE, don’t run in front of him as he is taking fire.  Actually, don’t run in front of any of your teammates while they are shooting.

Well, thats going to be it for now.  Depending on how many people like this, I may do a second one focusing on the infected.  So, leave some comments, tell me what you think.  I can handle it, so just do it.

Today we broke in the new place by making some cupcakes. By “we” I mean my wife. I did take the photos, though. She decided to go with monster-type creatures or maybe they are something from Seasme Street…not sure.  They are cool, though.  See more of them on my Flickr page.

Just wanted to put up a quick post displaying the photography of Kerry Skarbakka.  I found his work online and it blows my mind.  I am fan of any photographer who can pull emotion from its audience just by using their photographs and Skarbakka’s photographs do just that.  He takes photographs himself in poses that will give you goosebumps or at least make you feel his pain.  Apparently, he had trouble finding models who would be willing to pose in such a dangerous way, so he decieded to be his own model.  He sets up elaborate wire rigs to secure his body and his safety.  Many people may think his photography is morbid, but I think its just unique. So, take that.

Many digital cameras today provide a feature called a histogram.  A histogram is a graphical representation of all the pixels in your photograph.  The height of the pixels represent the amount of pixels and the horizontal line represents the brightness level.  The left side of the graph is the darkest area and the right side is the lightest.

The graph above is a very simplified representation of a horizontal axis of a histogram.  Pixels pile up throughout the histogram displaying how much of your photograph is very dark, dark, medium (properly exposed), light and very light.  A properly exposed photograph would have the pixels distributed evenly in the middle of the histogram, without any pixels touching the left and right walls.  Photos that are underexposed would have the pixels piled up on the left hand side and overexposed photos would have them climbing the right side wall.

Above are three examples of differently exposed histograms.  The left image is a histogram of an underexposed photograph.  Almost all of the pixels pile up on the left wall, the darkest part of the histogram.  This is the opposite of the histogram on the right.  Most of the pixels display a small curve climbing up the right wall.  This shows that most of the pixels in this photograph are overexposed.  The graph in the middle is a of properly exposed photography.  There are no pixels climbing up the left or right walls.

This is a very simplified description of a very powerful tool.  Start looking at the histogram on your digital camera, even your point and shoot.  It is important to know that the photo on your digital camera’s LCD screen may seem properly exposed, but it can be very deceiving.  You don’t want to wait until you are at your computer desk to realize that your photo is not the way you intended it to be.  You also need to understand that a histogram does not know what your artistic intentions are.  You may want part of your photo in a silhouette, which would cause your histogram to see pure black, thus pile pixels up the left wall of the graph.

This is my first tutorial-type blog post and I maybe a little rough around the edges.  If you have any suggestions for me or would just like to add something, feel free to leave a comment.

Today’s photo was submitted by Nichole Davis.  I have walked many beaches, many times and I would have to say, you don’t come across crabs just sitting around very often.  They are sneaky.  The great thing about this photo is it’s depth of field.  It does just what it is suppose to do, pull your eye to the subject.  Here is what Nichole had to say about the photo:

“This unfortunate crab has made it’s home on a jetty in
Kennebunkport. It seems as if he and a seagull got into it, and he was
the unfortunate (yet defiant) loser, somewhat like Monty Python’s Black
Knight. ‘Tis but a scratch!”

If you are on Twitter, follow Nichole. You can also follow me!

If you would like to add anything, speak up and leave a comment.  Don’t worry, we won’t judge you….well, a little.

It seems like all I am posting lately are photos of food, but these are awesome.  My wife and cousin made these cupcakes.  Yes, cupcakes.  They are spaghetti and meatball cupcakes and they are good.  I took a bunch of photos, but I didn’t really get one that I liked.  I am in need of a soft box or I need to stop taking all my photos at night, so I can get some of that ambient light.  Our plan is to take enough food photos, so we could put them in our kitchen or even make a small book for our coffee table.  So far we have gotten good feedback on the photos and the cupcakes themselves.  If you are interested in what they are made out of, send me a message.

Don’t forget, if you like it, Digg it.

Edit

I have been getting a lot of awesome feedback on these.  I have only posted them about 8 hours ago and I have almost 300 hits on the Flickr page.  Some people have been curious about what they are made out of, so I thought I would give a short description.  From what my wife has said, they are really easy.

Ingredients:

• Cupcake mix
• Frosting
• Yellow Food Coloring for the frosting
• Low Sugar Strawberry Preserves. (For the red sauce. From what I have read low sugar has a better color, we just used seedless regular strawberry preserves.)
• Ferrero Rocher Hazelnut Chocolates. (These can be found in the candy aisle of your grocery store.  These are used for the meatballs.  They have a great texture and taste awesome.)
• White Chocolate

So, what you do is this: Make the cupcakes and put them together on a plate.  When you make your frosting you will want to put some yellow food coloring in it.  Add a little at first and slowly add more until you get the color you are looking for.  Frost all the cupcakes with a small layer of frosting.  Next you want to make the spaghetti.  To do this you use a piping bag.  We bought a .99 cent piping tip and really cheap piping bags.  Its a lot easier to just buy a tip, so you can pick what size you want your spaghetti strands to be.  Then you just have to pipe the top of all the cupcakes.  If all the cupcakes are touching it shouldn’t be that difficult.  Just keep making different strands, until you get a look you like.  As for the meatballs, just dip the Ferrero Rocher chocolates in the strawberry preserves and place on top of the spaghetti.  Spread out some more strawberry preserves to make it look like red sauce.  As for the parmesan cheese, just rub some white chocolate on a grater.  If you want to take it a step further, go out and get the book “Hello, Cupcake.”  It is quite the amazing cupcake book.

And Boom, there it is.

Just wanted to post a photo I took of my dog using my new lens.  I got a Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 lens for my Canon 40D.  I have photographed a few things with it so far and I like it a lot.  Its a really compact lens, so it doesn’t weigh down my camera very much and it seems to have a pretty strong build.  The only thing that I have noticed is the auto focus is a bit slow and loud.  It would be nice if the focus was faster, especially since I have been photographing kids and animals with it so far.  As far as how loud it is, it doesn’t seem to bother me that much.  I have talked to people that hate loud cameras during weddings, but I honestly don’t see it to be so loud that its a problem.  If anyone is thinking about getting this lens, I would say go for it.  As for the photo, this is my dog, Brodie.  He is a part time Mini Schnauzer, part time jerk.  Overall, he is good dog.

• F/2.8
• 1/60th of a second
• ISO 1600
• 17mm
• Auto White Balance
• As always, I shot in RAW

So lately I have been very unmotivated.  I want to do things, but just don’t do them.  I have to do things, but I don’t do those either.  I have been working on stuff that should have been done already and there is plenty of other stuff I want to do, but just haven’t.  I seem to have many reasons why I haven’t been doing the things I want/should.  Firstly, I wake up around 3:30 in the morning for work.  Its awful.  People think its great that I get out of work around noon everyday.  Well, its not.  I’m tired all day and if I make the mistake (which I often do) of sitting down for a minute, I’m asleep in no time.  What I should be doing is getting up, going to work, then exercising.  I want to do this, but for some reason I would rather read about how much calories my body should burn than actually burning them.

Now for the real reason I’m lazy: Zombies.

I have been killing humans who have been infected with a rabies like disease.  I have been stuck in the city with all these infected and I, with a few others, are trying to make it out alive.  I have been living off of random pills I find in hallways, cabinets, and alleyways.  Those and the few medical packs I have are the only thing keeping me alive.  Did I mention its a game?  I probably should.  If it was real that calorie burning problem I mentioned before wouldn’t be much of a problem.  A few weeks back I took advantage of thousands of people losing their job and got myself a discounted Xbox 360 at Circuit City.  It is one of my favorite things to do, but it could, quite possibly, ruin me.  As of now, it has not taken over my life completely.  I, as well as the wife, hope it doesn’t.  I will admit, it has been slowing the process of many things.  Its not only the games, though.  The fact I can stream my Netflix “Watch Instantly” movies right to my Xbox, not only makes me lazy, it also blows my mind.

I am a 24 year old, married, college graduate and I’m addicted to video games.

By the way, if you want to make me even lazier, play xbox live with me.  My gamertag is floboski.

Haven’t posted a new “Photo of the Moment” in a while, so I figured I would. This is a photo that I took today. I found a photo online of burger shaped cupcakes and my wife thought she would give them a try. I think they came out pretty good and they taste just as good. I would like to give credit to Smiley’s Sweets and Creations for the awesome idea.

The cupcakes consist of:

• Vanilla Cupcakes
• Chocolate Cupcakes
• Frosting with yellow and red food coloring for the ketchup and mustard
• Coconuts with green food coloring for the shredded lettuce.
• A few sesame seeds on top.

The photo was taken at F/2.8 at 1/200th of a second.  100 ISO at 44mm.

Flash camera right at 1/16th power, I think.  A clamp light was diffused at camera left.