Speedlights are some of the most versatile pieces of lighting equipment.
You can do so much with them it’s crazy. For example:
Smoke art!
How cool is this? All you need is some incense, a paper plate (to catch the ashes), some speedlights, a tripod, and a black background. Actually using a black background for this is crucial because it allows you to illuminate only the smoke without having to worry about accidentally lighting up anything else in the room.
Start burning that incense and set your camera up on the tripod, aimed with just the tip of the incense at the bottom of the photo. You’ll edit it out later in post. Make sure the speedlights are synced to your camera, and before you take the picture of the smoke, wave your hand in front of it for a couple seconds to get awesome patterns. Then snap! Take the picture! You can also change the colors in post, or even invert the colors so you get darker smoke in front of a white background.
Photoshop is amazing.
You can also use a fog machine to take some sweet pictures.
For both of these pictures, I used two speedlights with different colored gels to get some great effects. Plus, it even adds some cool colors onto the fog. Speedlights can get some getting used to, but the results can be wickedly cool. It just takes a bit of practice, and then you can become a speedlight wiz.
Happy Photographing!
