We got a new toy.
A smoke machine. And if you know anything about photographers, you’ll know that a new piece of kit doesn’t sit in the box for long. We had to put it to the test.
The subject we chose was deliberately small — a perfume bottle, barely bigger than a roll of masking tape. The idea was to see whether we could create something atmospheric and genuinely dramatic from an object that small, using the smoke to add mystery and scale to what would otherwise be a straightforward studio shot.
What we were trying to achieve
The brief we set ourselves: make this tiny bottle look like the kind of thing you’d see in a high-end fragrance advertisement. Something between editorial and commercial — visually striking, slightly cinematic, with enough of the product clearly visible to still work as a product image.
Smoke in photography is beautiful and completely uncontrollable in equal measure. You trigger the machine, wait, and then you shoot — quickly, because the smoke moves and disperses in seconds. There’s a lot of trial, a lot of discarded frames, and then occasionally a frame where everything lines up exactly as you hoped. That’s the one that makes it worthwhile.
The result
We’re genuinely pleased with how it came out. The swirl of smoke around the bottle creates a sense of intrigue and movement that a clean studio shot simply can’t. It transforms a product image into something that tells a story — even at that tiny scale.
This kind of experimental work is something we make time for deliberately. It keeps us thinking creatively, pushes us to solve new technical problems, and often leads to techniques and ideas that find their way into client briefs later on. The smoke machine has already been requested for a client shoot since we started experimenting with it.
Could this work for your product?
Smoke works especially well with fragrances, spirits, candles and anything with a sensory or atmospheric quality to the brand. It’s also a genuinely different way to present a product that might otherwise sit in a fairly conventional category of imagery.
If you’ve got a product that deserves something a bit more creative than a plain white background, let’s talk. We enjoy a brief that gives us room to do something interesting.
For examples of our product photography work, take a look at our service page.
Related reading: Product Photography: What to Expect From a Professional Studio Shoot.
All studio-based work at dpix is shot at our Bromsgrove photography studio — fully equipped and never hired out to third parties.
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