My goal was to give the illusion of different colored smoke coming from 3 colored candles. I achieved this by gluing the candles to a wood base. I used burned match heads to simulate the wicks. I put a syringe with a needle through each candle from the bottome where the wick was and allowed just the very tip of the needle to stick out hidden behind the match heads. Each of the 3 syringes was filled with either red, green or blue food coloring. the candles were place upside down in an aquarium filled with water. The syringes were expressed slightly to inject a small amount of the food coloring into the water and the resultant effect was achieved. The final picture was rotated 180 degrees so that the "smoke" appeared to be rising. It was cropped, sharpened, increased contrast and slightly increased saturation. It took many attempts to get a pleasing result. The water in the aquarium had to be replaced after 2 or 3 takes as the food coloring mixed together and darkened the water. This became quite tiring after a while!!
I also attempted a variation of this technique with a cigarette and another variation using 3 matches. I will post these pictures after the challenge is over for any helpful comments. I hope you like this photographic trick I devised!
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Hey lawrence: Another great one from your arsenal and boy are there more where this comes from. Your creativity is unique and this is a dashing and outstanding effort. Congratulations on your top ten finish.
Nice illusion with water. Candles infront of fish tank, drop of food coloring behind (I was just playing with food coloring a water about a day ago ). Still a very cool shot though.
Okay I'll assume this is straight out of the camera. Very distinctive photograph and the wisps of 'smoke' appear to arise from the candles. I think this was shot perhaps under water and the drifting dye is perhaps ink floating within the water. Or, perhaps this was shot against a backdrop of water and the drifting dye was painted into the water. In any event, quite a nice entry and one of the few I think really meet the spirit of the challenge. Well done, and I'll be tuning in later to hear how you did this! :) 9
they're hanging upside down in a container of water, right? that's pretty cool. i think i would have like it even more if the only "smoke" was the dark, more crisp smoke. but still a very original technique!
Great use of food dye!
I've tried shots like this before but couldn't manage to get such detailed drops of the dye. I'm wondering if you used something other than water as your liquid... looking forward to reading the explanation of this one :)
This would be cooler if you couldn't see the source and if the background was white instead of pale yellow. It's a really cool idea. I'd like to know how you produced those colors! 5
Great effect. Looks like dye being dropped into water and photographed upside down. Wonderfully done regardless of how you did it, it really does look like smoke at first glance…9
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