Color and Smoke I

“Our world is a magical smoke screen.”
–Catherine E. Coulson as The Log Lady, Twin Peaks

One of the keys to becoming a better, more accomplished artist, is to explore new things, new techniques, new processes.  Through playing, much like a child, we learn and grow.  Many of the new and crazy things we try will never see the light of day, or as the case may be, the wonder that is the world wide web.  But you’ll gain new insights from everything you do, and here and there, along the way, you’ll add to your artist’s bag of tricks.

This is my first experiment with shooting smoke.  I set up my very old Vivitar 283 flash to the right of the smoke (I used an incense stick) connected to my camera with a sync chord.  I focused on the end of the stick and then tiled up a bit.  With a dark background behind, I lit the incense and started shooting.  Blowing or moving a piece of paper as a fan got everything twisting and twirling.

For this image, I converted to black and white, inverted the shot, and added the color.  Then a couple of passes through Topaz Glow and Impression to add a bit of punch.

Expect to see a few more shots with smoke in the near future!

Day 120 of 365.