Shooting with Smoke Bombs on Location - Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey

in this video , I show you how to take some great location portraits by adding smoke Arama TV presents take and make great photography with Gavin Hoey .

Hello .

I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching Adirama TV brought to you by adirama the camera store that has everything for us photographers in this video .

Well , you can see we're out in the woods and I'm going to do a portrait shoot with a little bit of a difference .

We're gonna add some smoke to our portrait .

Shoot now to create smoke in the woods .

I'm going to use one of these .

This is a smoke grenade , the sort of thing you get from Paintball Park .

Now there is a bunch of instructions on the side .

It's well worth reading before you start , but basically common sense prevails .

Don't let this off in a public place .

These can be used for for warnings as well as for entertainment .

And also use a bit of health and safety .

These lid off sparks when you first fire them up .

So a pair of safety goggles is always a good idea .

They can get hot as well , So gloves are really useful too .

For your model .

Well , they can stain clothing , so if they're wearing white , you might want to consider that .

And of course , if anybody has any breathing issues , you're gonna get a lot of smoke from these , So bear that in mind too .

OK , let's set the lights up , get our model in and get shooting .

So today I'm joined in the woods by Fern who's going to be the model for this shoot .

Now , before I go anywhere near smoke , I've got to get everything set up correctly because the smoke only lasts for a really small period of time .

The smoke bomb About a minute to two minutes at most , even for one that size .

So first thing to do is to work out the exposure .

Now I'm gonna use a bit of flash just to fill in the shadows here .

I've got my streak light 3 60 in a little soft box .

But let's start without the flash and work out the ambient light .

So working in manual mode , I'm going to come back here and I'm going to take a metre reading and my camera is telling me F four .

So the correct exposure is F four but I want to under expose by a stop to bring back some of the highlight detail .

Get a bit more drama in my shot .

So I'm going to work at F 5.6 .

OK , let's just take a test shot .

See how this looks at F 5.6 .

That looks pretty good .

We got some detail in the sky and we got some detail in the shadows , but it is quite dramatic , but Fern looks a little bit under exposed .

So what I need to do is I need to get the flash to be the same exposure as my camera F 5.6 .

So let's just pop the metre underneath Fern's chin .

Nearly there .

We'll just adjust the flash power so my flash matches my camera and my camera is under exposing the background .

That should give me a great looking shot , but let's just do a test shot and see how it goes lovely .

Want more ?

So that looks really good .

Now there's only one potential downside .

We wanted blue smoke , and , uh , well , we've got purple smoke , which is almost the same , but clearly it doesn't match the dress .

Now that could be a complete disaster .

But fortunately , I've got a little Photoshop trick that I'll come to later that will solve this problem for us .

So there's only one more thing to do before we actually set the smoke bomb off .

And that's to make sure everybody knows what's going on .

So I've been joined by my team .

Well , Sam , who's normally the other side of the video camera , and she's gonna be in charge of the smoke .

And I'm in charge of the photography ferns in charge of modelling .

So the idea is that , Sam , you're going to walk backwards and forwards behind Fern .

Move the smoke around and that's basically it .

Everybody knows what they're doing .

We're good to go with the shoot .

So , Sam , if you're ready , fire it up .

OK , so the smoke takes a while to get going .

But as you can see , it works really well .

OK , stay there , Sam , Stay right there to let the smoke drift across , OK ?

And you right then , OK , can put the smoke just mind there and stuck out the shop .

There you go .

Perfect .

Ok , well done .

Ok , so there we go .

The smoke lasted for about a minute That was pretty good going .

We got some great little shots in there .

You have to work quickly with smoke bombs because , well , they don't last very long , but that's all part of the fun .

OK , well , let's set something else up and have another go .

So we're gonna do one more shoot with smoke , and this time we're gonna do a little bit more of a conceptual shoot .

So we've got a small bird cage and we're gonna put the smoke bomb inside the bird cage .

Quick tip .

When you're doing this , make sure that the end where the smoke comes out from the smoke bomb is pointing away from your model .

OK , so , uh , I've got everything ready .

Sam's gonna do the smoke and then move along with Fern because we're gonna do a walking shot moving the flash as we go .

Everybody ready ?

OK , let's do the shoot where you go .

OK , then .

So if you want to start walking towards me , I'm gonna move backwards quite a bit .

So he moved this way .

I can hold that down a bit lower for you .

Adds the way .

Slow down a little bit .

It's close to think to lovely .

That's it .

OK , so there we go .

We got a nice little run out of that .

We managed to reverse things , go the other direction .

Hopefully , we got some great shots in there .

But there's only one way to find out .

And that's a jump over to Photoshop , and I'm gonna do that right now .

So , as it turns out , the company that make the smoke bombs make a whole range of colours .

One of them is also blue .

So in theory , I could have saved myself a little bit of Photoshop work by getting a better matching colour .

But having a different colour for the dress and the smoke does give me the option to change , either to get a really close match .

Not an exact match , but close .

Let's have a look .

So here's Vern in the woods with her blue dress , purple smoke and green background , and it's important to note that the three colours are all different and that makes this job so much easier .

Right ?

Let's go a little bit closer over the dress so we can see what's happening .

Ideally , I would do this with an adjustment layer to give you that extra level of control .

But because it's such a small dialogue box with the adjustment layer , I'm actually gonna use a layer straight on top and do it this way with huge saturation , so I could just change the hue .

And when I do , everything changes .

That's not really the effect I'm after Today .

I want to be much more targeted and just change the blues in the shot .

So I'm gonna come here where it says Master and drop it down and choose blues .

When that makes sense , that's what I want to change .

So with the Blues selected , is it actually blue the dress ?

Well , once you've selected any of the colours and it , honestly , it actually wouldn't have mattered which colour I chose .

I then have access to these little eyedropper tools .

And if I choose the dress by clicking it , I'll find out that actually , the dress is more cyan than blue .

If anything , right , that's fine .

That's my basic selection done .

Now I need to make sure that only the dress changes , and I'm gonna do that by increasing the hue to maximum and the saturation to maximum .

Now .

Pretty , obviously , I don't want an orange dress .

But what I'm looking at is the colour around .

Is it changing on these extreme settings ?

You will see it really clearly .

If it does , the answer is no .

It's OK at the moment , but there's some areas I've missed , so I've missed bits .

Let's just get the eye dropper tool and we'll click a few areas just to add those in so we can get as many of those as I can .

There's a few little bits down here .

Once I've done that , I can then come down to the little sort of , um well , rainbow effect at the bottom , I guess .

And I can move these sliders around , and if I go to too far , you can instantly see which bits are also going to be affected .

So I don't want to change that , but I do want to get as much of these sort of the greeny cyan as I can .

So let's just bring that out and similarly with the the purples .

Yeah , I don't want to affect the purples , but I do want as much purple in that dress as possible .

Now , if Fern was standing against a more coloured similar background , I would have needed to do a selection before doing this , but as it stands , that's pretty good .

Now , if you wanted a bright orange dress , stop there because that would be absolutely perfect .

Very eye catching , but really not what I'm after for this shot .

I've just done that so I can see what's changing now .

I can come and fine tune the results so clearly I don't need as much saturation and I don't need the hue to be there .

I'm looking for a hue , that kind of matches and a saturation that kind of matches the the smoke That looks pretty good .

I'm gonna stop there and click .

OK , now , once I've done that from a distance , this looks pretty good .

We've got a nice match in colour , but up close , things aren't quite so good .

There's a definite sort of weirdness in colour around here at the top of the dress .

So to deal with the small areas , I'm just gonna make a brand new layer .

I'm gonna come to my foreground colour , which is currently black , and I'll just sample a nice , bright purply colour from up here somewhere .

That'll do .

And then with a paint brush I can just paint that colour onto the dress directly .

So with a nice small brush and we'll just add in the the strap , which is more grey , if anything , and the other one here and the same with the other colours here as well .

That's maybe a little bit light in colour for that area .

Let's just see if we can sample a darker colour .

There you go .

Now you're looking at this , I reckon , and thinking that is the least convincing paint job ever .

It looks like you've just taken a paintbrush and gone over the top .

Well , that's because I've just taken a paint brush and just gone over the top .

I will make it better , but first thing to say is to get this to look better , takes a bit of time .

Not a lot of time , but more than we have in this video .

You really don't want to sit and watch me paint around the edges of the dress , so once you've done most of the work , you then need to blend it in , and I'm gonna blend it in by changing the layer blending mode from normal all the way down to colour towards the bottom , and that will pick up the texture from one layer and the colour from the active layer .

I can even drop the opacity just to soften the effect down slightly .

And that should allow me just to add in some colour to those areas .

OK , so there you go .

There is my blue dress turned purple , matching the smoke and creating a wonderful picture out in the woods .

Well , that really was a great fun shoot .

Fern did brilliantly .

The woods looked amazing , and the smoke really added that extra element of excitement .

Now , if you want to see more videos for myself and the other amazing presenters here on Arama TV , you know what you've got to do .

You've got to click on the , uh , subscribe button .

Um , I'm Gavin Hoe .

Thanks for watching .

If you want great looking prints at low cost , be sure to visit our easy to use online printing service .

Adirama Picks has professionals who treat your images with the utmost care that you can count on for a quick turnaround on photos , cards or albums .

Use adirama picks dot com