Someone over on twitter asked why he was shooting black powder.
Couple of possible theories on the smoke one of which is that he didn't shoot anything and the smoke was Photoshopped in by clueless minions. Or - using a blank shell would allow unburned gunpowder to exit the muzzle, although modern smokeless powder still wouldn't produce that much smoke. There are a lot of threads discussing this now... And a whole bunch of photos that are at least as true as his multilayered PDF birth cert!