Color of smoke

So a few days ago I signed onto the stumble website and have been using it to search for art. Whats great about stumble is it just randomly finds web sights that fit your criteria of what you want to look at. So instead of spending time going out and tracing down artists now i just press a button and a new one randomly pops up. Whats also great about it is the artists that pop up aren't always famous or well know. This means I get to look at art produced by people who might never have their stuff in a museum. So while stumbling today I found Colored smoke by Graham Jeffery. Colored smoke is exactly what it sounds like. It is images of smoke, both colored and uncolored. From what I read from his site he apparently makes the smoke from incense sticks then shots them at a fast shutter speed in a studio. A couple of the things he mentioned that are important for shooting smoke is good lighting and a large depth of field. This is because smoke is always moving and you cannot get a definite focus on it. Also without proper lighting the smoke is hard to discern against the backdrop and its detail is lost. Whats great about this form of art is how much and how little control the artist has. Because he is shooting in his studio he can control the lighting the depth of field and has a life of its own their is no way he can exactly predict which direction its moving or what shapes it might take. In a way it is very similar to nature photography. The photographer does have a certain degree of control but in the end the results are controlled by the billions of little things that, although small by themselves, can make or break an image.