20/5/2009 Smoke Trail Photography

Saw the smoke trail photos in a magazine recently and decided to try it myself.

What have I used for the smoke trail photography?

1) Incense stick (aka joss stick)
2) Black paper as background
3) Camera (of course -_-)
4) Lighting (I use Sony F58AM External Flash with Wireless function)
5) Tripod
6) Photo Editing Software (I use Photoscape which is free ;D )


After setting up the background and my external flash, with my A200 mounted on the tripod, I started to ignite the incense stick. At first, a few shots are not successfully, as I failed to make the smoke to be thick enough for shooting. Later on, I realize that by shaking my incense stick, the smoke will become thicker, so I just keep shaking the incense stick to produce thicker smoke. By putting the flash lower and pointing up, i started to get clearer pictures of the smoke trail.

So after completed the shooting and transferred the photos to my PC, I used Photoscape to edit the photos. Since the background is in black color and the smoke trail is in white, so I just use the INVERT function and turn the black to white and white to black. After that I just change the Hue of the photo to give the smoke trail some colors. After that, I just enhance the smoke trail by increasing the contrast and also deepen the colors.

The result:












Previous Photo with Reflection

PS: Please do not do it in your room, as I have done it in my room, and my room was filled with "poisonous" smoke for an hour plus XD.