Smoke photographs better with backlighting
By Alex Wild
This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Earlier this year I needed an image of a working bee smoker*. But standard ambient light produced a rather flat image:
What to do? I hid a Canon 430EX speedlight out of view behind the smoker, and when it fired the smoke came alive:
Light does interesting things to smoke. I'm going to have to play with this more.
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*The smoker is central to a beekeeper's toolkit, as bees remain calm and more easily worked in the presence of smoke.
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