The 'How To' guide

Lots of you wanted to know how the images in my last post were created, so this post will give you all the information you need, not only to understand how they were created, but to have a go yourself. It really is simple.

The images were created from nothing more than smoke. Yep, really. The clue was in the title folks!!

I was going to write up a brief description on how to do it, but thought it would be easier to follow the original instructions instead of my ramblings, so what follows are photo's of the magazine pages which tell you everything you need to know from what equipment, how to set it up, right through to how to process and colour them in Photoshop.

I hope that if you click on the images they will be sufficiently large for you all to read the instructions.

Happy Snapping to you all, and if any of you create your own pictures, please drop by and let me know how you got on, I would love to see them.

Smoke Signals

Some of you may remember the photo I posted of bubbles, a very creative shot I produced after reading 'how to' in my camera magazine. For those of you that haven't been visiting since 2006, you can find it in my post 26things January 2006 . The only equipment needed to produce the picture was a pint glass, straw, washing up liquid and a bit of time.

Well, this month's magazine provided another of these gems. Something so simple you could do it at home with minimum kit and even better, with minimum time. The completed images they showed in the magazine were so fantastic I couldn't see how I could photograph something so beautiful, let alone reproduce them, but it gave all the 'need to know' info...

... so I just had to have a go and here are some of the results:


















I hope you enjoyed looking at these as much as I enjoyed producing them.

Merry Christmas everyone. x

Photographic work

I know, I know, you're all fed up with seeing those damn fireworks on here... or maybe no-one is visiting anymore cos it's been so long since I posted!!!

As I don't have the energy to blog, but am missing you all so much I thought I would share a couple of pieces I have been working on for the current unit of portraiture and the human form in my AS course. If you haven't already guessed, this is where my limited energy is being spent!

After researching other photographers and/or artists we are meant to try to replicate at least one piece and also to show that our own photographic work has been directly influenced by what we have researched.

With this in mind, whilst conducting my research I came across this composite photograph by the great Jerry Uelsmann. It touched me instantly, being such a strong image I knew it would be the one I would recreate.

This is Uelsmann work, entitled 'Symbolic Mutation', produced in 1961

This is my reproduction with my own photo's which I have titled "Wife Beater"



I was also influenced by some of his other work. Many of his images involve hands, often with the sea or a landscape in them and figures of some description.

The following, although not a copy of his work was influenced by it, and is a piece that I am really pleased with.

I entitled it "In God's Hands"