10 Well-Crafted Artworks in Smoke Photography

Vapers are always interested with anything connected to clouds and smoke. This fascination is even more pronounced when works of art are created out of smoke. This article in Contrastly describes the aesthetics of smoke art photography as aleatoric.

It is an aleatoric art form because it is art that's created through chance, relying heavily on randomness to give it its spark. The photographer's attraction to this genre lies in capturing smoke in any of its variously indeterminate shapes, sizes and wispy strands.

Read this and that article to know more about smoke art photography.

For you and your friends who love to vape huge clouds of vapor, here are ten beautiful images created out of smoke from cigarettes or cigars and from vapor produced by e-cigarettes.

The Ghost Ship
by tobeyness

This black-and-white photo is an inspired work of smoke art! It shows a hazy but distinct image of a three-masted sailing vessel with all the topsails unfurled and the shapely silhouette of its rounded hull listing to portside and rising astern. You may not have noticed it, but this artwork is actually a composite of several captured images of smoke that's curling, rolling, twisting and spreading in the air. The artist edited, cut and pasted the smoke-filled images like puzzle pieces and arranged them in layers to create that ghostly apparition of a ship.



Smoking Frog
by John Cootrane

John used his digital manipulation skills to modify this original photo that was posted by another artist on his DeviantArt gallery. In the unedited self-portrait of VIIIIZZZZ (below, left), he captured a candid image of himself in a pensive mood as he exhaled a stream of second-hand smoke. In the digitally altered image of VIIIIZZZZ (below, right), the expelled cigarette smoke has become a laid-back, dopey-eyed frog. A few wisps of smoke connected the ghostly frog to the smoker's mouth and nose.



Smokin' Blue Fish
by unknown artist

A thin plume of blue smoke coming from the lit end of a cigarette resting on an ashtray becomes a little blue fish caught in the midst of turning around as if it's been swimming round and round a small glass bowl. The artist's excellent photo manipulation skills captured the graceful lines of the body of the fish from its sloping head and open mouth down to its top and bottom fins until the wisps of smoke from the fins seemed to flow like water and gathered to form a gently curving tail. A thin line of smoke kept the fish connected like a leash to the burning tip of the cigarette.



Smokin' Dancer
by Ivanas

The white fumes of a cigar have been digitally modified to form the faint silhouette of a dancing woman. Her flouncy skirt was caught mid-sway and twisted around her thighs after she did a quick pirouette. When she made a complete turn, she had her left leg raised slightly while she balanced herself on one foot. This imaginary lady was caught in the act of turning her head, like she was looking over her right shoulder, while moving her right arm in a graceful sweep in front of her and keeping her left arm above her head.



A Lady in Smoke Illusion
by Avi Ornstein

According to this blog post by Mighty Optical Illusions, this digital artwork is credited to Avi Ornstein. It's been shared multiple times on social media, and many people have commented that the inspiration for this particular smoke art seems to be Marilyn Monroe's iconic up-skirt photo that was taken in a New York subway.

In a pure stroke of luck, she was standing right above a steel grate in the subway when an unexpected whoosh of air suddenly lifted up her skirt. Good thing her photographer for the subway shoot quickly grabbed his camera and captured that momentous event. And, the rest they say is history.



Lost Love
by leskfish

This is a beautiful work of smoke art, which integrates the negative image of a girl into the digitally manipulated wisps of smoke. The superimposition technique doesn't look awkward. In fact, you can barely see the parts where the girl's image and the 'shopped smoke merged. This piece is called "Lost Love" and it must have been inspired by the beautiful visage of the girl that the artist had loved and eventually lost.



A Smoker and His Sails
by Luca Mangiapelo

This guy has all the details of a seaworthy schooner down pat. The smoke ship seems ready to sail away! All three tall masts have their sails unfurled from top to bottom. The rigging and the ropes secured to the ship's bow are visible despite the artist's use of thin wisps of smoke in between streaks of white and curling plumes. Everything seems so picture-perfect!



Smoke Djinn (Animated)
by Mert Ayan and pomoyka

The original artwork was the handiwork of Mert Ayan, but a Russian artist named pomoyka modified it and turned it into an animated smoke art. The result was simply hypnotizing! It features a supernatural creature in Arabic mythology called Djinn, which is believed to be an intelligent spirit of lower rank than the angels that's able to appear in human and animal forms and to possess humans.



White Dove in Flight
by unknown artist

In this smoke art photo, the pale streams of cigarette smoke converge into the graceful silhouette of a white dove in mid-flight. The bird's wings are spread wide and stretched out behind its body as if it's been flying in the air. The creature's head came from a negative image of a real bird and it's been skillfully integrated into the flowing wisps of smoke. Trailing plumes of smoke make up the bird's tail and keeps the hazy apparition connected to the burning cigarette in the ashtray.



Smoke Skull
by Curcio' Art

This digital photo manipulation by Curcio' Art deserves a lot of praise. Instead of superimposing a finished artwork of a skull into the smoke, the artist took the time to create a hand-painted image of a smoke skull and added that to a photo of a man smoking a cigarette. The staged photograph of the smoker has the right amount of light coming from above, highlighting the man's face and arms and pushing back the shadows behind him. The shadows served as the perfect background for the smoke skull.



Smoke art photography isn't limited to manipulating images of streaming smoke from cigarettes and cigars. Photography and digital manipulation enthusiasts also make use of virtual smoke to create their artworks. Other visual artists like to add smoke effects to portraits and glamour shots of models.