Oh Snap! A little more smoke

Played around with an art piece a friend loaned me, working light and shadow, and the challenge of mixing props with smoke. I kept stalling cause I wasn't sure how I was going to make it work, but once I got started it was quite fun.

Here's what I came up with:

You are my tree and I will protect you!

When I saw this tree at my friend's house I knew I wanted to play with shooting it.  When I saw the bear on sale at Hobby Lobby I knew just exactly HOW I was going to shoot the tree.

The above shot is not it...  Not entirely....

Ah MAN!!!  That was my LAST ONE!!!!

THIS is what I had in mind from the moment I saw the bear...   (click on the image to see it larger)

And this is how I did it:

Speedlight @ 1/4 power camera left and behind the tree and bear. Gelled orange and fired through a 1/4" Honl grid. Speedlight gelled red @1/2 power fired through one of those bathroom glass bricks to create a pattern on the black background.  It's propped up on a roll of blue tape to help with positioning.  Speedlight camera right @1/64th power with 1/2 cut CTO fired through a Lumiquest SBIII soft box.  I ended up adding 2 sheets of velum to drop the light level on the tree so I could could balance it with the bear.

Table top is a 1/2" piece of MDF with solid black low-gloss formica. It's propped on rolls of duct tape to keep the tree's base out of the frame. It also allows the incense to be placed right next to the tree without showing up in the bottom of the frame.

Hope you enjoyed...