Smoke Machines

[SwissJon]

I just came across a beautiful photo of a couple of kids in a forest in Asia somewhere. In the description of the photo, the photographer said they used a smoke machine to add atmosphere in the background, and they were right, it brought the rear of the photo forwad and made it far more intimate.

This got me thinking about whether I could use a smoke machine in my photography, and realised it would probably help bring a lot of atmosphere into the photos where there was very little wind, a bit of "fog" sitting on some water, etc etc. (Hoping that the fire brigade doesn't get called!)

So I was wondering if you ever used a smoke machine out doors, and how do you get it to work? The ones I've seen are "indoor" and seem to work on mains voltage. Is there such a thing as a battery operated smoke machine? I'd very much like to try this technique.

Thanks

Jon

[BuddhaPi]

Battery Powered Smoke Machines!

[Biomech]

I've seen some "fashion" shots recently that use smoke to make the shot really dreamy. What you could try is smoke bombs - not sure the correct term - but plumbers use them to smoke out pipes and find leaks. Just check the wind direction

[Ambrosia76]

WOW those are expensive....Drop a block of dry ice in a tub of water and use a fan, or collect a bunch of smokers and buy them a carton of cigarettes.....

[Biomech]

Monument 1470F Smoke Pellets Pack of 10 - Monument available at Plumbworld

[Krusty79]

...or you can make your own newspaper smoke bomb. It's probably better that I didn't know about this in my younger days...

YouTube - ‪How to Make: Newspaper Smoke Bombs‬‏

[Niresangwa]

I've shot with a smoke machine before. it was indoors, smelled like pina colada. Combined with off camera flash it was pretty awesome.... don't know if i would bother to go to the trouble of trying to make it work outdoors... I imagine it would take an awful lot of smoke outdoors to make it work as it would disperse pretty quickly.

[SwissJon]

Thanks folks.. Boy is that battery powered baby expensive.. the mains ones are about 1/10th the price.

I hadn't thought about smoke bombs, the Swiss national day is 1st August, and they usually celebrate with fireworks, so smoke bombs are usually available in the shops quite cheaply.. But it usually gets very dry here in the summer so I'll have to be careful or you might see in the news about an English photographer who got arrested for starting forest fires..

The trouble withSwitzerland is that dryness, it means that you rarely get summer days with mist on the water in the morning, so the plan is to try to make some of my own on a still calm morning.. It's worth a try I guess... I've recently decided it's time to start re-engineering some of my favourite spots to give them more atmosphere.

[snow_man]

You could always try baby powder. It probally wouldn't work as well for large areas, but for smaller areas I'm sure it would work well... Just squeeze the bottle really quickly to create a small cloud of smoke.

[rosserx]

For outdoors in the woods, dry ice is the way to go.
Dry Ice Fog and Special Effects