Steamy photographs

We did Murph the other day- one of my favorite Hero workouts: Run 1 mile, then do 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats. Finish with another mile run. I re-opened a few of my callouses from Cindy but thought I'd spare the blogosphere another shot of my ripped-up hands. Instead, I'll just post a picture of one of my workout partners, John. He had just finished Murph, come in from his 2nd mile run, and collapsed on the mats. When I went over to talk to him, I couldn't believe my eyes- he was actually steaming. It had been raining and John was soaking wet. When he laid down on the floor, the water started to evaporate leaving visible tendrils of smoke wisping off of his t-shirt.

It was a phenomenal sight so naturally I grabbed my camera. Never having shot steam before, I had no idea what I was doing. I tried shooting from different angles, ordering John to "sit still..... don't move" (to which he'd reply, "I don't WANT to move.") I tried using short exposures, long exposures, wide aperture, narrow aperture, and every permutation in between. Nothing worked. I could see on my camera's LCD screen that it wasn't showing up.

This was really upsetting me and I hated that I couldn't capture the effect that I could see with my own eyes. Later on I had an idea- why not add some steam artificially? I mean, isn't that what Photoshop and Gimp are for? Besides, it's not like I would be making up a fictious event; it really did happen. I just couldn't capture it with my camera.

So I searched the web and found a few tutorials for creating things like fog, clouds, and smoke, but nothing specific for steam. I tried the smoke suggestions (In GIMP: draw white lines on a new transparent layer and then alternately apply a Gaussian blur with the IWarp effect until satisfied with the result. Finally, adjust the opacity to minimize its presence) Well..... it didn't quite work out as I had hoped. I was never able to get the beautiful laminar flow that I saw floating off of John's shirt, but I make myself feel better by telling myself this is just a first pass. I will keep working on the technique until I feel it captures what I saw yesterday.

Until then, here is the shot of John pseudo-steaming, post-Murph.