Smoke #2

Geez Charlie, too bad all your hard work has just gone up in smoke. I feel for you.
In all seriousness, this is very well done. You've frozen any movement so the trails are crisp and well defined. Also like the colours contained frown blues to white.

Yea, Bob, I like the colors alot also. The thumbnail looks like a B&W. You think I should move on to mirrors now?

Charlie I assume this is nature that is on fire. Very cool or should I say hot.

It is David. I don't have insence which would be good for controled smoke, so I went to the field and rolled some dry weeds in newspaper like cigars and use that for smoke. That makes it nature, right.

Very nice Charlie, I like the way the smoke curls at the top.

Wispy, graceful curves and placed nicely in the frame. I like your experiments... keep 'em coming.

Charlie,

The thumbnail doesn't begin to do this justice. Superb composition and detail. Very striking. I'll be interested in seeing as many of these as you want to post.

pat

Fascinating, with the patterns and lines in the top half particularly fascinating.

Beautiful shot. What a great idea. I'll have to give a try.

Thanks all for comments. I should have said that I have played around with saturation, contrast, sharpening white balance and gradation, etc. Actually to a significant degree.

Charlie

Hey Charlie,
Love the curves and lines on this and I'm sure the possibilites are endless. Looking forward to more of your experiments!

Cheryl, lovely shot. I will give it a try too. Can you please give us the camera and lens settings...Thanks

Sure Hussain.

Olympus E-5
Olympus 50mm F2 macro lens
1/60 sec @F8 -0.3 EV
fill-in flash, held behind an below the smoke source which was held in a clamp.
of course a very dark backdrop cloth.
ISO 100

I have done significant post processing which I can't remember all but I start with gradient adjust and try it low key and high key and usually like and use low key. Then try different white balance settings, color balance adj., brightness & contr., sat, sharpness, etc. Photo art is the correct place for these, I think, because They are always much different than original shot appears which are not often very appealing. I did crop out about 10% of this shot at the very top as the smoke there was just spread out and not interesting to me. I don't think I cloned anything on this one but have on others.

This I have found is a "shot in the dark" type effort as I am averaging 1 in 20 exposures that have something of interest. Most are not of significant detail or form. I think this could be an endless source of entertainment with so many variables to try. Smoke source alone is something I haven't explored much.

Good luck.

Charlie

Very cool!!! Most dreamy image. I like this a lot.

I hope you have a prescription for the substance you are burning.

Harley, I enjoy a good retort as much as the next guy and that is a good one.

No prescription. Will you turn me in.

I did think of posting it to landscape cause over there they seem to know where everything belongs and what they want (or not). I like these fooling around projects and don't need all that gushing adoration anyhow

It's a shame that you ruined an otherwise fine post with these comments. Please refrain from this kind of commentary in the future.

Ok.

Charlie:

I hope you didn't smoke the stuff before you captured it.

Fabulous effect. Keep fooling.

Just a little buzzing in the ears, Gary.

Charlie,

Very sensual and well lit. Very well done....