Smoke and interpretation

JoRe

I like to photograph smoke. The original pictures can sometimes look really great to begin with but often they have something hidden. Most often I just look at them for a while and then try do visualize what I see.
All of these are shot in front of a black background. So there is a fair bit of editing – hope that is ok.
You can find some more in my smugmug gallery (Art/Abstract) and a description of the technique in my blog http://blog.jonreveman.com

Sam

Wonderful! I love the abstract nature of these.

Sam

JoRe

Thanks for the comment Sam I wasn't sure if it was ok with this kind of edited pictures.

Sam

JoRe wrote: »

Thanks for the comment Sam I wasn't sure if it was ok with this kind of edited pictures.

This is a photography forum. Almost any type of image is allowed. We all see the world differently, here you get to share that view.

Sam

Qarik

all I see are uteruses and pelvis in these! cool stuff!

billseye

Not to take the discussion off-track, but Qarik.... I see your avatar photo and read "uteruses and pelvis" and think you know way too much for your age

JoRe

Thanks for the comments (Sam, Qarik(?))!

DaddyO

These are awesome thumb Very very cool. Excellent work.
I would love to finally do some real work with smoke and I will have to fire up your tutorial and see how
you get such effective results that are intriguing visuals. Looking forward to see how you do the lighting and colors as well

work2fish

Very cool. What sort of lighting and processing was used?

JoRe

Thanks! I should probably write some more around the lightning. I use a rather powerful flash (Guide number 58) with an off shoe cable. I have cut out a milk carton to make a snoot. The trick is to make the black background stay black while getting all the light reflected in the smoke. This will yield good gradients for the smokes different densities.

As for the processing it varies with the shot, but common is to use curves to make all things that should be black black. Then I try to get as much intensity spread of the smoke as possible (ie for the smoke to cover as much of the gray scale as I can while keeping noise down).

At this stage my workflow becomes more (if possible) random. Rotate, mirror, the way I colorize, all depends on what I have seen in the smoke. This is also the point where I quite often give up on a picture and realize that I should take more pictures