First try at smoke art

There was a great link over at http://www.revellphotography.com/blog/ to Graham Jeffery's smoke art tutorial http://sensitivelight.com/smoke2/. Its been a rainy week all week here in the DC metro area. So what better way to kill a couple hours. So I set up with a ultra600 head at full power in a med. softbox and put a reflector on the other side, used D200 w/ 105 micro at f22 with a sync of 250th. It is imparitive that you use a shutter release because you have to manipulate the smoke (incense) while it is burning. I used a my hand to cup the smoke, or just blew it to clear the air and start new batch of smoke. After a lot of trial and error, the bottom line is just as it says on his tutorial, you need a lot of light, depth of field, and a bunch of smoke. The small thin incense sticks I were using gave me a couple results for me to take into CS3. After I found an image that I liked I opened it in camera raw, bumped the exoposure, blacks, and clarity. Opened in CS3, inverted, did 2 hue/sat layers, soft brush on vector mask to paint in color, also painted out any amoke I did not like for a final image. This was FUN I must say. With all this rain and winter approaching I am sure that I am going to go back to this project. I must get more smoke though.