Smoke Art.

[[wingnut]]

As per usual my mind has been playing again.. So ventured into the world of smoke art today. Seriously fun... Only shot for about 25 mins before i was overcome with the stink from the incense sticks but still managed about 50 keepers in that time.

Here's just a couple I have processed. Enjoy.









Going to work on a few triptychs and quadtychs with these some some other kind arty farty stuff too..

[BertRoot]

Arty farty indeed. Lovely work mate. Can't say I don't like any but think the pattern in the first couple are the bollocks.

[[wingnut]]

Cheers mate, it was best when there no breeze in the studio / conservatory at all, i did open all the doors and windows for a while, but the smoke was all over the place and manual focusing was tough.
Glad you liked them.

[DB]

Very nice indeed, how you manage the multi coloured one?

[dpSparhawk]

Very nice Wingnut. Excellent capture of smoke. Really impressed mate.

Actually, I have a box of incence cones on my desk (Patchouli Amber).. LOL I bought them the other day with a view to doing the same thing. LOL you beat me to it

DB. The trick with Smoke art is to shoot the smoke against a black background in very good light. Some advise to use the cones and shoot as close to the tip as possible so that you get the best curls and shapes.
Then, more magic happens in PS. You invert the result so that you end up with a white background. Then it's all about pulling curves about for the colours.
You have to be quite quick because soon enough, the smoke will fill the room and start to cause diffusion on the images.
Am I close enough Matt? hehe, can anyone tell who has recently been reading up on Smoke art.. lol

[Bilbo_baggin]

Great shots Matt.

Saw this in a mag recently and it is a cool art subject.


Paul.

[[wingnut]]

Cheers guys.

Bilbo - Photographic Monthly by chance?? Been meaning to do this for ages but it was only till I read that article last week it twigged it would be red entry..

DpSparhawk - You pretty much on the money, Again mine was bit of a blue peter effort.
The whole thing with smoke art is it is very hit or miss. I set myself up a solid black background, a sheet won't do it has to be a smooth piece of black card, I set the incense stick about 6 inches in front of that, the camera was tripod mounted about a foot away from the burning stick (sandlewood btw), at roughly 90 degree's to the camera but angled slightly towards it and positioned behind the stick I had my flash gun mounted on another tripod, this way it will give some nice back light on the smoke but avoid the black background. As for camera settings I sync'd the camera to the flash gun at it's highest speed which was 1/250 sec and used an aperture of f/11, I tried f/16 but it was too dark. The iso also has to be as low as possible due to smoke being made from particles, the higher the iso the noise is introduced and it is very visible. Then I just started snapping away. The main trick to this is the focusing. i went full manual for this as the smoke is always moving with a little breeze flowing I chose to just adjust it as I went, so several were out of focus but most were good.
Once I had the shots it was over to Photoshop. The image was converted from raw to jpg with a slight sharpen and white balance adjustment. In photoshop I inverted the image first, adjusted the levels a little too, then created a new adjustment layer and tweaked the hue/saturation. By ticking the colourise box just move the sliders around until you get a desired colour.
For the funky coloured ones you can either create multiple layers and blend them together or as I did just add a new adjustment layer of a gradient map, select the desired colour gradient, it will look tacky to begin with but don't panic just change the blending mode from normal to colour and hey presto it should look something like this.



I would be more than happy to do a step by step guide if anyone would be interested, not just in the ps side of the image but the setting up of it all.

[crashtestmac]

I would really like to see a giude to do something like this if you can knock one together....!

Great pictures.

[cosmicma]

when i had a go at this i used some black cloth as a background set up the camera on a tripod and had my son hold the flash firing up through the smoke
using one second exposure so when he heard the shutter open he would manually fire the flash a bit primitive buit it works

i like the effects you have ceated wingnut very creative

[dpSparhawk]

Thanks for the extra information Matt.
Very cool shot there as well. A guide would always be appreciated mate

[liveseytowers]

They look cool mate, the comp entry is a corker I wonder how many people pass out because of the fumes when they try this lol

[Hezi]

stunning

[peterc4]

very nice mate

[[wingnut]]

I would really like to see a guide to do something like this if you can knock one together....!

Great pictures.

I will happily do that for you all, am going away over the weekend but will knock it up early next week. May get the ps side of the tutorial done this weekend but will re shot the smoke stuff with images of the set up.

@Cosmicma - You really have to use fast shutter speeds to capture the movement in the smoke, too slow and it will lose all clarity and be just a blur. Think moving water.

[B B Leo]

excellent shots m8

[cosmicma]

@Cosmicma - You really have to use fast shutter speeds to capture the movement in the smoke, too slow and it will lose all clarity and be just a blur. Think moving water.

i forgot to mention i used a dark room so the shutter speed wasn't important the flash was the only source of light, i should have made that bit more clear sorry

but your right if shooting in daylight or similar then a fast shutter speed would be essential

[[wingnut]]

i forgot to mention i used a dark room so the shutter speed wasn't important the flash was the only source of light, i should have made that bit more clear sorry

but your right if shooting in daylight or similar then a fast shutter speed would be essential

Um, not sure about this mate, my understanding is that whether daylight or studio a 1 second shutter speed will not capture the detail of the smoke all you will get will be a blur.
If what i think you are trying to say is that the shutter is open for one second then the flash gun is fired to technically freeze movement as in rear curtain or slow sync, then yes it could work, but with the flash only going for a tiny amount of time compared to a one second shutter speed there will still be movement present.
I posted the images on another forum and one guy said he did his in some huge studio. Made me laugh really as mine was done on the conservatory table with a homemade back drop made from card and £1.50 of incense stick plus holder. We both achieved the same effect yet some how I get the feel he thinks his will be superior as he used the most expensive lighting set up and did it in a huge studio..

[cosmicma]

if there was ambient light it would be a problem but in a dark room there is nothing else for the camera to pick up on so in theory i could leave the shutter open indefinitly ( i know i can't due to noise etc.. ) and as we know a flash freezes that particular moment in time so the smoke remains sharp first or second curtain sync isn't important in this particular case

i put one of the photo's up a while ago but on black background rather than white
http://www.digital-forums.com/showthread.php?t=337089

these were done at 1 second exposure f13 at these settings without the flash in a dark room you get nothing

[dpSparhawk]

Well, I think the best thing to do is try the two methods

Either way both examples from Wingnut and Cosmica are freakin' awesome

[[wingnut]]

So in a round about way it is freezing the action, but it worked as your image shows, which by the way is very nice.

As long as the end result is achieved what ever way you get there is the right way.

I have been tweaking more of my original images over the weekend and have uploaded them to my flickr page which can be found here:- Smoke Art Set on Flickr. Though tit best to do that than keep up'ing loads of the same to here, it's then up to you guys to follow the link or not if you want to have a look.