Five tips for planning your smoke bomb wedding photos
If you fancy a bit of drama in your wedding photography and like the idea of smoke bomb wedding photos, you might find my latest article useful for making your product selection and using them safely and creatively on the day.
Smoke bomb wedding photos have become quite popular in recent years. Perhaps you’ve seen them used at a wedding or maybe you’ve fallen in love with some smoke bomb wedding photos you’ve seen in one of the bride mags.
In any event, adding smoke bombs to wedding photography can be an effective technique for enhancing the mood and tone of your wedding photos.
Another way they can be useful is if you’re getting married at a budget wedding venue. As long as you’ve got some outside space, a bit of smoke can go a long way to enhancing a less-than-stunning backdrop.
Enough chit-chat. Here are my five tips for planning your smoke bomb wedding photos
Tip 1 – Check that your wedding venue will allow you to use smoke bombs on the property.
Yes, always check that your venue allows smoke bomb wedding photos on the property. And, when I say on the property, I don’t mean inside as you won’t want grenade smoke indoors – it might not be toxic but you still don’t want to inhale it. And neither will your venue because smoke bombs are essentially pyrotechnics so there’s a public liability issue there as well.
Of course, if you’d like a little smoke for your first dance, you can always hire a low-lying fog machine which is a perfectly safe alternative and very effective. For Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxford weddings, Academy Productions is very well placed for hiring lighting and special effects equipment, like fog machines. Visit https://www.academy-productions.co.uk/wedding-event-smoke-haze-snow-machine-hire.html for more information.
Tip 2 – Always work with your photographer to decide the best time and place to use them.
Unlike fireworks, it doesn’t have to be dark for smoke bomb wedding photos but a fairly well saturated background, such as conifer trees, does help to make them pop.
From a weather perspective, ideally, you want nothing more than a gentle breeze. I tried it once in high winds and I couldn’t keep the smoke in the frame so I wouldn’t recommend it.
You can create smoke bomb wedding photos in light rain; in heavy rain, the smoke effect would be greatly diminished so probably not worth doing.
If you want smoke trails around you in a portrait, you’ll need to get help from members of your bridal party to trigger them and run around you for 30 seconds to fill the space with smoke before your wedding photographer starts shooting.
If I’m going to photograph with smoke bombs, I’ll want to do it in the afternoon, before too many drinks have been consumed – purely from a safety point of view.
Tip 3 – Understand the risks of sparks and staining to clothes.
Once you’ve triggered a smoke bomb it’s best to keep it at arms-length and away from clothing, not because of fire hazard or explosions but because of the risk of scorching from tiny sparks, and staining from coloured smoke.
Sparks are mostly emitted when you initially trigger the device but further sparks are possible.
I haven’t actually seen damage on clothing from sparks but I have seen permanent staining to a white wedding dress from a coloured smoke bomb so if you’re planning to hold them as a bride, white smoke might be the best choice. You can always have coloured smoke behind or around you at a distance.
Both sparks and staining are important considerations for smoke bomb wedding photos, particularly if you’re concerned about keeping your wedding dress in pristine condition or you’re planning to sell it after your day.
I don’t want to put you off having smoke bomb wedding photos – certainly, not if you’ve got your heart set on them – but it is important to remember that they are pyrotechnics so there are risks that go with using them.
It’s also important to mention that any responsibility for damage to you or your clothing is yours. Neither your venue nor your wedding photographer’s public liability insurance will cover you for using smoke grenades. They can’t buy them either so keep reading to ensure you buy the best products.
Tip 4 – Choose the UK’s number one supplier of smoke bombs – Enola Gaye
In the UK, the supplier that most wedding photographers recommend is Enola Gaye. I can’t speak about other brands but the Enola Gaye smoke grenades are generally cool to hold although they can warm up in your hand once ignited so don’t think about giving them to children. The body of Enola grenades is biodegradable and the smoke is not toxic but as with any chemicals, you should avoid inhaling the smoke.
Product wise, I’d say go for WP40 Wire Pull Smoke range which can be hand-held. Enola Gaye says they give you around 90 seconds of smoke. I’ve found that the smoke does start to taper out towards the end so for a full plomb in your smoke bomb wedding photos, your photographer needs to be fairly quick.
Tip 5 – Get enough smoke bombs to have a practice run
If you just want smoke bomb wedding photos of you and your new spouse, buy at least six so you get some practice with them. It doesn’t always go to plan on the first try. Obviously, buy more if you want them for bridal party photos as well.
As I mentioned earlier, if you’re wearing a white wedding dress, and you plan to hand-hold the smoke bombs, it may be wise to choose white smoke for yourself; it’ll help with staining but remember you still need to be careful with sparks. For the rest of your wedding party, perhaps one or two more colours that match your flowers/wedding theme would look good.
For LGBT weddings, choosing red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet can make for fabulous smoke bomb wedding photos.
You can get user and safety information on Enola Gaye smoke grenades from the company’s website at https://enolagaye.com/.
For more information on my wedding photography in Buckinghamshire, Oxford and surrounding counties, see my frequently asked questions.
You can find details of what’s including in my wedding packages by visiting my wedding photography pricing page.