"Ritual Vision" - A smoke photo. (Comp.)

Incense smoke, lit with multi-colored light from below. Background

added with Paint Shop Pro 9.

I see you dedicated yhis photo so much time, I mean, at the moment to capture and then, when you worked in Photoshop

Fabulous work here...adding the background must have been difficult, given that smoke is transparent to begin with. Did you use photo filters for coloring smoke??

I love your smoke photos, and to be honest I prefered the ones with a plain white background. I think the focus is the smoke, so the less distractions the better.

WOW the smoke is gray..but here they are colored.very clever

A beautifull frame too.the frame is the half of a photo.

Excellent. The coulours are fantastics.

Please see my Smoke as Art folder. You will find an "image" there called "How I get The Colors." The background is created with Paint Shop Pro and added as a layer.

 

I sometimes add a background to provide a sort of contextual layer to the image. This, I think, provides the viewer with a psychological cue linked to the title.

 

If these smoke images transport your mind to another place and time then I have succeded in my attempt to provide visual stimulation of the imagination.

I love the look of the smoke and the way it's coloured, but the compression artifacts ruin the quality of the image.

Dave

I just spent the week-end trying to get a photo using candle smoke.I really value what you have created. Ho do you get the crispness so perfect? I used a range of 'f' stops and apperture stops but none came out as crisp as yours. Well done.

 

Wonderful!

I shoot from about three feet from the smoke. My aperture is usually about 9.5 - 11. I use a mediun-power studio strobe located ~10 inches below the incense cone(s)with various arangements of colored gels under the pyrex bowl supporting the cones. The short falsh duration is mainly responsible for the crispness.

 

This does NOT always work... sometimes the smoke is moving too fast or is of very low density and the results are not sharp. That is why I shoot LOTS of frames! I typically shoot around 150 frames during the life of a cone of incense!

 

I then go through the shots looking for the ones with useable exposure and sharpness. From those I pick the ones with good aesthetics.

 

When the image quality is very good, i.e. not noisy, I try a little edge enhancement with Paint Shop. This does not always work. I estimate that I get from 5 to 10 "good" frames out of 150 frames shot.

 

It is a lot of work, but I think the results are worth it.

Chapeau. Un saludo

so beautiful colors..congrats..

very beautiful photo...

A fascinating bunch of flowers.

how nice, beautiful..

This is beautiful and unique. Your hard work definitely paid off!

Excellent very creative , congrats //Salvador