Anyway, I went down to the abandoned parking garage tonight, and shot someone blowing out steam. That sounds really weird now that I write it out...
But it looked really cool, so just bear with me here.
I was shooting with a 50mm at f2.2, 1/200, and ISO100. There was a single strobe backlighting the person set to 1/128 power, so super low power. I didn't need much for two reasons. One, I was just using it to light the smoke, not the person. Two, I was shooting very open, so a lot of light was let in.
It was really dark in the garage, so I used live view to focus on the subject, then hoped it stayed in focus while I shot. Luckily, it did! For the most part at least.
Since I was at such a low power on the strobe, I could shoot almost in burst mode and not worry about recycle times or draining power. Just started shooting when I saw the steam, and stopped a little while later.
Of the shots I got, I chose one where the steam pretty much made a solid colume going up. Not too solid, but solid for steam. I cropped it down to a very skinny ratio, so you eye just follows the smoke around.
Converted to b/w, it looks fantastic, and even more awesome when I raised the clarity all the way! I also added a local adjustment over the face to make it a complete silhouette. Faces are too distracting. Humans are very very good at recognizing faces, so if you have one in the frame it will almost always be a focal point whether you want it too or not.
That's about it! Not that complicated of a photo, but with really cool results! Backlighting semitransparent things always has really cool effects.
See you tomorrow!
Looks Great!!
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