Smoke trails

Bit bored today so I had a go at creating some smoke trail pictures as per the article in Jan 2008 Digital Camera magazine.

Not quite up to their standards but ok for a first go despite looking like a collection of body parts

1 (looks like some sort of insect)



2 (bit fuzzy)



3 (some monster head)



4 (The long jump)

They are so cool! How did you do them??

Get a scent stick or candle in front of a black background.

Shine a light upwards through the smoke (I used my small desk lap) but make sure the light isn't shining on the black background or into your camera.

Blow the candle out and snap away (with tripod) at the smoke trails.

(takes a bit of trial and error with the focus / speed / ISO)

Once you've got some images - open in photoshop.

Create a duplicate layer - flip the duplicate layer around (vertical or horizontal)

You can then either delete half of one layer or set the transparancy of one of the layers to 50%.

Lock one layer and then just move the other one accross the first till you get the shape you like.

Once you're happy with the white smoke shape against the black, create a new layer (multicolured circular graduation) and set this layer to 'overlay' so it only colours in the smoke.

You can obviously mess about with the amount of colour ect to get what you like.

cheers phil! will have to give that a try..

Here's Rudolph the red nosed freaky parrot thing!

Very nice Phil! I like the first one which looks like an x ray of an insect of some sort

Cool will be doing this when i get chance!!!

They look like those pictures you have to look at when you go and see a psychiatrist!! LOL!!

Have you just let out a secret Sam?

I think so

hehehehe may be too much info