Playing With Smoke

When I first started getting into photography, I found a couple of blog entries on photographing smoke. I was anxious to try this out, but I didn't have a flash that I could use off-camera... until now.

This image, I created a grid overlay in Gimp as well as colored the smoke with a gradient.

In this image, I duplicated the smoke layer and flipped it horizontally. I was surprised that it resulted in a very serious looking girl!

A few things I'll try the next time I photograph smoke:

• Shoot further away from the smoke than I was to capture larger patterns.
• Shoot a larger quantity of images
• Try burning two incense sticks together
  

If you look at Steve Paxton's smoke art, you'll see that the smoke starts and stops within the image. This is likely the result of using a snooted flash. I'll try to get a tighter beam of light next time and use a larger black background.

I learned that this is better done in a room you're not going to spend a lot of time in after you shoot the smoke, unless you like the smell of incense!