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Abstract Smoke Art
By Anton Heiberg
You can create your own abstract artwork with very little equipment and props. These smoke
photographs were created with three incense sticks, an off-camera flash and Photoshop.
Find a room where there is no movement in the air, as even slight body movements will disturb
the air and destroy the natural patterns created by the smoke. Also make sure you can
ventilate the room afterwards as the smell of incense will last a long time after the
experiment and you or your other half might not particularly like the smell. I used
a softbox roughly four feet from the left-hand side of the smoke so that the smoke was
side lit. Lighting from beneath should also work well. Set the camera on autofocus and
focus on your hand, placed directly above the incense sticks, then turn the focus to manual focus.
Place a black background behind the incense and make sure that there is no light spillover
onto the background. It might also be necessary to block any stray light from hitting the
camera lens to avoid lens flare. At first I metered the flash at f/22 and set the camera
accordingly, but I soon discovered that the smoke needs more powerful light to show up
properly. I was glad I used a Pentax *ist D digital camera, otherwise I would have wasted
a lot of film again. I opened up the aperture to f/13 until I was satisfied with the
contrast of the smoke against the black background on my camera's LCD screen. By varying
close-up shots and shooting a little wider you will find endless interesting patterns and
shapes. Using more than one incense stick close together creates interesting effects: The
sticks burn and smoke at different rates and one pattern seems to form inside the other.
I have tried to make the smoke columns twist and twirl by sticking them on the accessories
of a hand-operated food mixer, but I was not very successful as any movement near the smoke
column disturbs its natural flow and creates chaos in the air. I found the best way to
achieve beautiful smoke patterns is to light an incense stick, stand back and let Mother
Nature work her magic. All you have to do is wait until an interesting pattern emerges in
front of the lens and fire away.
Post-processing is done in Photoshop. For final pictures with a white background, the
images were inverted--in other words, black becomes white and vice versa. If higher
contrast is desired you can adjust Levels to your liking.
The coloring can be done in several ways, but I generally use two:
1.) Create a new layer on top of the smoke layer and change the Blending mode
to Overlay. On this new layer use a feathered large brush to paint in the desired colors.
Don't worry, the black-and-white areas will not show any color, so you can paint loosely.
Instead of a brush, I have also used the Gradient tool with some success.
2.) On the inverted smoke layer make a feathered selection and use the
Hue/Saturation sliders to adjust the colors to your liking. Repeat for several selections.
Use the photos as single art pieces or frame three together for greater effect.
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