Smoke Bombs...

 "Just hanging around in a shed full of smoke in a dress... like you do."

How much smoke does a smoke bomb let off? A LOT! That’s what I learnt creating this shot.

Laura was kind enough again to let me use her as a sexy crash test dummy in my attempts to become better at model portraits. I seriously don’t see this as where my future in photography lays but I want to improve none the less.

Yet again the ‘Urbex Shed’ was my location. I was unsure about using the smoke bombs here, the roof is full of holes and I could imagine if smoke started pouring out the roof of my shed in the middle of town it’s not going to attract the right kind of attention…

I had an idea of what I wanted to achieve. Laura stood just inside the door, with a gridded light on her from the front and a big light source coming through the door behind. The smoke was required not to look like the place is on fire but to make the light from outside show up better.

Once I got the lights set up (see below for details), I prepared the smoke bomb! I figured I only needed a little smoke so I would need to put if out before it filled the shed and alerted the attention of the emergency services… I taped the smoke bomb to a stick and filled a mop bucket full of cold water.

I lit the bomb, wafted the stick around like a camp wizard and then shoved the stick deep in the bucket… Oh… that doesn’t work! How can a bucket of cold water not stop it from smoking?!?! If anything it smoked more, the shed filled and I ran outside with my witches’ cauldron and attempted unsuccessfully to put it out…

The bomb ran its course, the back door to my house was open, downstairs was filled with smoke, the area I live in had a burny smelling blue haze in the air for the next 20 minutes. No firemen came though so all’s good!

Anyway, no one cares! I’m babbling.


Lighting:

 I used 2 lights for this shot. To light Laura I used a YN460ii in a gridded octobox over head on a boom looking down at her. It was maybe 2.5 meters away from her.

The second light was through the door, just a bare YN460ii pointing back into the room we are in and hitting Lauras back. Although I didn't get quite the look I was after, (light rays cutting through the smoke), I still think it looks pretty cool and I like the rim light that seperates her from the dark environment.

The Edit:

I know I know! Where's the smoke? This was my favourite shot... it was also the 3rd from last one and the smoke had mostly cleared. Fortunately I had the camera on a tripod so all the shots were composed (almost) the same. The smoke I used was actually from a shot the front light didn't fire on due to slow recycling time...

I brought the highlights in the dress out as it was a little flat. The only real other work I did was curves, some dodgy dodge & burning and colour toning.