Shooting smoke - how did I do?

[kateeorion]

I read a tutorial in the "How I Took It" forum about shooting smoke with no extra gear, and I figured I'd give it a shot. I took this one with the on camera flash, using the night sky as a background. For post-processing, I put it in GIMP and added the gradient - that's about it.

EXIF stuff
Camera Nikon D40
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/6.3
Focal Length 18.3 mm
ISO Speed 320

As for critiques...I'm looking for anything, really. How is the composition? Is the gradient too much? How could I improve it?

Thanks!
Katee

[BuddhaPi]

Been obsessed with this lately, I would suggest, cloning out / removing any artifacts in the backgrouns, cropping out the smoke source and perhaps lose the "puffy" portion of the smoke at the top.. smoke is cool to experiment with not only does it test once patience, but you can get some interesting images as well



more on my photo blog

[Jonbar18]

Can one of you post a tutorial?

[BuddhaPi]

This is the best tutorial I have come across thus far.. Smoke Photography

My set-up is pretty much the same, but I use a small LED spotllight ( like one you'd attach to a hat) and put it under the smoke souce point upward, seems to help with clarity..