Hi! I’m so glad you stopped in!

Smoke, what are you talking about Hippie Ang? Well, If you rattled around the site before you landed here you will know I rekindled my photography media with a bubble shoot obsession. I had bought a camera setup that was way beyond my knowledge and experience. While I was experimenting and learning, I thought I needed to photograph smoke. Why? I don’t really know why I feel compelled to do most of the things I do. But, here we are anyway.

I had a backdrop set up for shooting bubbles and decided to switch gears and photograph smoke. It worked filling the bubbles. Of course I had to do an internet search on how to begin, what camera settings will work best, so on and so forth. So, I got to it. I put my camera back on the tripod, lit a few incense, strategically placed a light or two, set up a remote flash and started experimenting!

It has been a few years since I executed this photo shoot and I couldn’t find my failed photos to show. The point would have been to show the struggle I had with lighting and timing of the flash. Anyway, the biggest learning challenges for this experiment were focusing, lighting, timing of the flash and if you had any air movement. The process of figuring out and getting results came about rather quickly. Probably due to the peaceful vibe the low light and incense were putting out. So I kept my shutter snapping.

Now, let me stop here a moment. Take a good look at the picture above. Does it not creep you out just a little bit? To me it looks like I caught a ghost in the background looking at me. I know its just layers of smoke, but sure did make me zoom in when editing.

You can really get some interesting shots while photographing smoke. Once again I was satisfied with my experiment. I wasn’t sure what to do with the delightful smoke photos I created. It seems that most of the time I really don’t care about the plan, I’m enjoying the execution. I still took my photos to the editing board to clean them up wherever needed. Exitement would ensue when I would find nothing to clean up, meaning more growth in the process. With more growth in the process came more fiddling with editing.

My semi-willing subjects had to be bribed. Tuna on the orb for the cat, I can’t remember how I bribed my kid. I’m grateful they humor my crazy with bribery or not.

I haven’t photographed smoke since, which is kind of a shame because it was really interesting and fun. If there is a such thing as creative ADD, then I’m pretty sure I have it! Yesterday I may have been photographing smoke, while today I’m throwing mud and tomorrow i’ll probably try to make a huge sculpture out of a bunch of materials I have no idea how to use. Who knows where the wind will carry this hippie’s experiments. I think i’ll continue to ride the breeze.

That’s all I have for now, hope I stirred up some laughter and joy!

Come back soon or you’ll be missed. I have many many more things to catch you up on. From experiments to adventures and plain old musings.

Peace, Love & Chaos,

Hippie Ang