Betty of Las Vegas-based Bella Leigh Photography is aiming to build her love and wedding photography business, so to showcase her creativity, she rounded up several artists for a personal shoot. “I had a vision of all black outfits with the neutral colors of a dry lake, and I wanted to add smoke for a ‘wow’ factor,” she explains.

To bring her idea to fruition, Betty contacted several creatives in the Las Vegas market to come together and produce this styled shoot. Captured in nearby Jean, Nevada, the session featured black and grey smoke bombs with a couple clad in all black posed in the foreground. Betty says she gave the subjects—a real married couple—some basic direction, but mostly let the shoot unfold organically. “I told them where they should walk, where they should stop and when they should just be in the moment together,” she says. “The feelings and love all came so naturally.”

To get the smoke bombs in just the right place and to set them off at just the right time, Betty had her photographer friend Edith Wagner of Frida Lily Photography help out. “We both pulled the smoke bombs, which were about 15 feet apart, and then ran!” Betty explains. “The couple then started walking toward me in slow motion until they were right in the middle of the smoke, at which point the magic really started.”

(Captured using a Nikon D750 and a NIKKOR 50mm lens.)

Photo © Bella Leigh Photography

Creative director and photographer: Bella Leigh Photography
Assistant: Edith Wagner of Frida Lily Photography
Hair and make up: Brianna Michelle Beauty
Florist: Rosie Posie

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