Beautiful Pictures

Via Ann Althouse, this gallery of coloured smoke pictures struck a chord with me. I enjoy art such as this, minimalist, mathematical patterns. Simple, yet stunningly beautiful. Graham Jeffery, the photographer (he disdains the word "artist" as it seems "too fanciful" for him) has a wonderful site up with many interesting works. How does he do the smoke pictures?

Firstly I should point out that the smoke is everyday grey. I have found joss sticks to be the best source of smoke. The smoke is side or back lit and photographed against a black background. If I want the final picture to have a white background then the whole image is inverted, black becomes white, white becomes black, and greys stay much the same. The colouring is done in Photoshop by selecting parts of the image with a highly feathered selection and adjusting the colour with hue/saturation or one of the other colour adjustment tools.

These above reminded me of the work of Peter Saville, mostly noted for his work in design for Factory Records, the home of Joy Division/New Order. These sleeves were all different, no band photos or song titles, simply works of art that packaged the band as something different, like a small club that only certain people would, or could "get." He still works with them to this day and has described the creative/collaborative process with the band as something like "One of them wants it to be red, and another says 'Make it blue.' So I come back with something green and they all hate it- it's quite simple really!" Here are some examples below- the first is the sleeve from "True Faith" the second an independent Saville composition.