Flash Photography Tips and Tricks with Dust

Flash Photography  •  Photography Tips

If you prefer a good dose of humor mixed in with your photography tutorials, look no further. Kai, from over at DigitalRev, is here to teach us about using flash to capture dust, or in this case, baby powder, in mid-air. Kai’s dust dancing video tutorial is inspired by a series of similar photographs taken by professional photographer, Thomas David. Let’s have a look at the video then we’ll go over Kai’s setup:

As he explained in the video, Kai’s setup isn’t too complicated. He simply uses a black background, two lights outfitted inside large softboxes on both sides of the model, and two black board reflectors. The lights are angled slightly towards the camera since you don’t want the background to be lit. That’s where the black reflectors come into play. By placing the reflectors in front of, but slightly of to each side of the model, the reflectors will help eliminate light flair coming from the lights that are pointing towards the camera. It’s also important to turn off any additional lighting that may be on in the room. Kai followed Thomas Davids lead and set his lights to 1/4 power. Once you’ve got the studio set up properly, it’s time for the fun part…

Cover your model in powder and ask them to dance as you snap photos of the resulting dust cloud. Keep in mind that timing is everything, it may take you a few attempts to get coordinate your trigger finger with the moves of the model.