How to create original designs using ink, smoke & fire

My Mission

• Working in Thailand for a herbal supplement company called Captiv8 I was asked to produce a group of very important images that would become their branding for all future packaging and marketing.

Their current designs were 100% digital and lacked the organic life-giving feeling the company were looking for.

See what I mean? Beneath you can see Spirulina & Noni, both of which look great but are clearly computer generated.

The Solution

My job was to create a more natural looking collection of photographs which captured the essence of each amazing herbal supplement.

At first I was pretty stumped before my awesome team came up with the idea of dropping ink into water and photographing the results. It was suggested I experiment with this technique in order to capture all of the the 8 different product logos.

Ink in Water

So, we bought a large fish tank, a large sheet of white paper to put behind it, a few lights and a bunch of different ink types. I filled it up with water, positioned my lights and paper... and then I started playing! As you can see below:

The Evolution of Ideas

After a while I realised that sticking to the ink in water theme was limiting me.

So I started experimenting with other mediums...

Smoke

The first thing I tried was incense smoke, illuminated from behind against a dark background.

I shot using the burst feature on my Canon 5Dmkii meaning that I took hundreds of photos at a time, always looking for that one magic moment when the incense spoke created the perfect pattern for me.

Then we moved on from this idea to the final stage of our photographic experiments...

Fire

We decided to capture the movement of fire using long exposure photography.

But how to do this?

At first we tried using my fire-staff (a part-time hobby of mine) with both ends lit, spinning round during the long exposures, but this didn't have the desired effect as the two points of fire were too far away from each other.

So we tried using poi instead. For those of you who don't know, poi are two fabric wicks attached to metal chains and can be swung around in a very beautiful way, when one is practiced in this art.

Finally we bought a bunch of sparklers, which are not hard to find in Chiang Mai where every child seems to play with them on a nightly basis in a manner that would be considered dangerous in the Western world.

The Selection Process

After a month of shooting a ridiculously huge number of photos the task ahead was no easy one.

Basically we had to identify the potential winners!

Aways bearing in mind that images can be manipulated in photoshop.

Our first shortlist was in the hundreds and it took a fair amount of Monday morning meetings to decide on the eight finalists.

If you enjoyed reading this, I strongly suggest you watch this short film in which I show you (in my usual musical time-lapse style) the journey I have just described to you.

Okay, that's me for now!

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed.

Share the love... Share the Steem... and take natural supplements! You will live longer.

Oh, and one final thing would be the Steemit Christmas gif below, which I would love to claim as my own creation but must of course give credit where credit is due...

Many thanks @creatr for making it for me :)