Photographing steam/smoke...

Hello,
I will be shooting a set of photos on chefs-at-work. Naturally their kitchens will likely be filled with steam and smoke. As it is indoors, lighting may be tricky so will need flash. But light will just reflect back the steam/smoke which I want to avoid.
Basically how should I achieve something like this?

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You'll probably need to get the flash(es) of camera. Looks like a lightsource from off camera right and one backlighting the steam in the picture above.

Be careful with your gear though, especially the flashes of off camera. I manage a restaurant and it can get pretty crazy behind the line...

Simple "every-day-emergency" location lighting
SL-2 optical slave: Look at post #10:

lmulderi wrote in post #5527580
You'll probably need to get the flash(es) of camera. Looks like a lightsource from off camera right and one backlighting the steam in the picture above.

Be careful with your gear though, especially the flashes of off camera. I manage a restaurant and it can get pretty crazy behind the line...

I am arranging for the photoshoot to be before restaurant opens....Am meeting with the restaurant manager to discuss some plans ahead of time too.
looks like the consensus is to avoid using direct flash on steam.
How about using no flash? Will it work or the effect may not be as punchy?

I've used a flash on this one with great success. It was shot with one flash off camera, and another flash from above, flagged off to create the gradient background.

can you elaborate on the "flagged off" part? That looks interesting background lighting.

Sure .

What I did was set off a soft box to my right, as you can see from the reflection on the teapot. What's not readily evident is I also set another light for the background, but I put a cardboard flag of sorts - you can sort of see it from the hard line from the background - what it does is create a contrast for the steam to be evident. The flag was short enough that it created a hard line on the right side, but not so long that it didn't affect the left side of the image so much.

I'll see if I can find a photo of my setup for you. I usually like to take photos of my lighting setups so I can remember what I did, it'll take some digging on my part. Really, the key to shooting the steam is to create a contrasting background, just enough for the steam to be evident. If you shoot it against something white (as was the case here) without creating some kind of contrast, the steam will just blend right in, hence why I did the flagging trick. My "client" (the design student) was set on having a white platform, so I was forced to use the flag to prevent the steam from getting washed out.

thanks zansho. I am having trouble visualising the flag trick. I think I have an idea, but not sure if it is correctly interpreted. As they say a picture speaks a thousand words. hahahah....

Well, if you just want to use a single softbox light, you can do the same thing.

Same setup as I said before, minus the background light. Then, get a black cardboard to block off the spill from the right side of the softbox, to create the gradient. The only reason why I used a second light was to get more even lighting on the left side, and to light the top of the teapot a little bit better.