For months and months I kept seeing other photographers and models working with colored smoke. Seeing how I love colorful shoots (even though I am color blind), I had to give it a try.
I researched colored smoke and found an online store that ships colorful smoke grenades typically used for paintball games. Check out Ansgear to see their collection. They have several different sizes, varieties, and colors of smoke grenades. The grenades I settled on were wire pull basic grenades. I started collecting colors over a few months..
I knew I wanted to use several different models in several different outdoor locations for the images as well as a video so I reached out to several different models and started lining up shoots. I experimented with a grenade to see how much smoke it would produce, for how long it would produce it, and how hot the grenade would get (just to see if they could be safely handheld). The amount of smoke is nothing short of amazing. You can easily get close to 45 seconds of really good smoke with each grenade. And although they didn’t get extremely hot, I still decided to find another method for the models to hold them. Wife to the rescue! She found a decorative wire enclosure that worked great. Simply start the grenade, drop it in the basket, and swing the basket around.
Each model found amazing outfits to match or compliment their smoke colors and the shoots began. Since I knew I wanted to make a video related to the shoots, I employed my 8 year old daughter to man the video camera (cell phone). By the way, she is so excited her name is listed in the credits on the YouTube video. She’s curious as to how many ‘describers’ (subscribers) she has now!
I love several of the images we got from the shoots and the video is one of my personal favorites (despite the fact it is one of my most disliked videos to date – go figure). I am now on the hunt for more ideas that involve colored smoke. Thanks to the awesome models, my wife, and my daughter for helping me with this several month long project.
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