Want to add a cinematic edge to your portraits without setting off the fire alarms? Here’s how I use smoke (safely!) to build mood, depth, and a touch of theatre — with practical tips, gear advice, and plenty of trial-and-error stories along the way. Because smoke, when used well, is like a cheat code for creating depth and drama in portraits. Whether you’re shooting in a studio, on location, or in your back garden with a very confused neighbour watching — this walkthrough covers how to control it, light it, and make it look intentional rather than “someone just burned the toast.” It’s cinematic portraiture, without the Hollywood budget.

Transcript

How Smoke and Fog Can Transform a Portrait

So, have you ever wanted to try something different with your portraiture? Maybe something a little unusual. In this video, we’re going to do precisely that — with just a touch of smoke.

Smoke and fog can completely transform a portrait, whether it’s indoors or outdoors. It can add atmosphere, depth, mystery, and sometimes even just a touch of magic. We’re working with Jess, who’s a dancer, for this series — because movement and smoke seem to go really beautifully together. We’ll show you how the different settings, nozzles, and machines can create different styles and types of effect, and it’ll all come together in one beautiful image at the end.

Planning Your Smoke Shoot

When you start thinking about using smoke, the best way to approach it is with a mood board. I’ve spoken about these in other videos — it can be images from Google, it can be AI images, it doesn’t really matter. What you’re trying to get is a sense of the vision for your shoot.

With smoke, you can go in lots of different directions. Are you going to make it cinematic? Dreamy? Gritty? What is the story you’re going to tell, and why is smoke going to be part of it? Because at the end of the day, smoke is just a tool. It’s just like light. It’s just like posing. It’s just like finishing. It’s just part of your portrait.

So when you’re working it out with a mood board, take into account not just the atmosphere and the colours, but what you have available to you in your space. We don’t have a particularly big studio and that governs a lot of what we can do — but we can use that to our advantage. With a slightly smaller space, smoke has a bigger impact. Take all of these things into account when you’re planning, and you’ll make the most of your time.

Types of Smoke

Broadly speaking, there are three different types of smoke available to you.

Hot smoke bombs— we don’t use these very much. That’s not my thing. Mostly because when you have these huge clouds of smoke — and you have to use these outdoors, you cannot use them indoors — whenever there are pictures with smoke bombs, people…