High-Speed Powder Photography Tutorial

Two packages of holi powder from Amazon.com
2x 10lb packs of the cheapest flour. I purchased these at my local grocery store, but you could get them from Amazon.com as well.
Plastic Ziploc bags
Dust Pan
1 Einstein E640 Strobe with a beauty dish on it + 2 bare portable speed-lights (all of them were on light stands and hooked up to wireless triggers). You could get by with just 1 front-lit speed-light, but 3-4 lights is ideal.
Broom (to clean up your mess)

You can dump piles of the colored flour on the dustpan in different areas and then throw it at the model from behind.
Avoid throwing the powder around the eyes.
Try to keep the powder/dust away from your camera, as the powder is a very fine. Ideally you would be want to be using a 70-200m lens so you can be further away from the model, but I was using a 24-70mm lens.
I used Manual Mode and dialed in 1/250″ to cut the ambient light, F8 for maximum sharpness, and ISO ~100 for low noise. After that was dialed in on my camera, I adjusted the flash power up and down while taking test shots until it looked well exposed in the preview screen. After I got it looking normally exposed, I just started taking the actual shots, without having to worry about adjusting any exposure/flash settings.
To help focus in the dark, try to take the images near a constant lighting source. Just shorten the shutterspeed to 1/250″ to cut off the ambient light. This way, the only light that will show up in the image is the light from the flashes.
Remember to shoot in RAW format and then you will be able to increase the Vibrance and Saturation in Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop.

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