Smoky art

Have a look at this interesting new sort of art. It is the smoke art. Abstract photography is nothing new, and people constantly come up with new — or re-invent old — versions of photography techniques. One of the ones that is going like wild-fire (excuse the pun) around the interwebs at the moment is the art of photographing colored smoke. In case you’d like to try it out yourself, here are a few useful tips on how it’s done.

The best way to get ‘cleanly’ lit smoke photos is to use a clean environment with controllable light. A studio would be ideal, but anywhere you can hang up a black background is perfectly usable. The most important thing when photographing smoke is getting enough light to freeze the motion of the smoke in mid-air. You can do this by using a lot of light (think direct sunlight falling through a window) or by using one or more flashes. When you’re photographing the smoke, you’ll want to make sure that no stray light hits the front of your camera lens (this will cause glare or solar-flare type effects), nor on your blackened background (because that will bring out definition in the background, which you don’t want either).

When you are photographing, it is easiest to let the smoke rise on its own volition. Instead of trying to manipulate the incense stick, try wafting some motion into the air to disturb the even plume. Alternatively, you can try to create interesting shapes by making the plume turbulent: try introducing a ruler, an upturned spoon, or a sheet of paper into the plume to alter its shape and ‘feel’.

Now that you’ve captured the photos, it’s time to take it to your digital darkroom. Crop your image to a composition that works for you, and then use levels or curves to adjust the contrast of your photos. You’ll want to make sure that the background is completely black (hold the alt key while adjusting the black-point levels slider in Photoshop, it gives you a preview of what you’re actually doing), so it turns into a pure white when you invert the image.

Once you’re happy with the background, invert your image, and decide if you like the black or white background best — stick with whatever you prefer, but often the white backgrounded images have a lot higher impact. If you have stray smoke, dust, or details in the background you’re unhappy with, use a brush with the same colour as the background (i.e white or black) or clone tool to get rid of them.

To colorise the smoke, use the hue and saturation tool. You can apply the color to the whole image in one go easily, because your pure white or black background will be unaffected by this tool (if it does make changes, then your background needs some work first). Alternatively, you can colorize part of the image, or use multiple colors, by making a selection of a part of the smoke, and use the ‘feather selection’ command to create a gradient. Using the Hue and Saturation tool now results in colorizing parts of the smoke image only. Nifty, yes?