Smoke and Mirrors

I've been listening to one track on my iPod again and again for the past 4 days, and that's the cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Every so often, a song comes along that lifts you right up out of your doldrums and sets you free to be happy again, and this is one of them.

Smoke 1

I spent most of Monday and Tuesday night trying out this technique of photographing smoke that I picked up from a flickr group called artsmoke. (short summary: backlit smoke against a black background, invert colours in GIMP/Photoshop) It's a frustrating process: out of over a hundred photographs taken, only 3 were (barely) usable, and none of them come close to the ethereal beauty of the images some of these people have managed. The two biggest challenges: getting the background completely and evenly black, and reducing noise while retaining sharpness in the smoke plumes.It'll take me a long time to get this one right.

Smoke 3

tags:

Comments

Popular Posts