Rangefinder Magazine
March 2006

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Smoke Signals Craig Kienast
 

I’m always looking for ways to inspire myself and my art. One day I was photographing some coffee beans and a cup of coffee for a client, and the cup needed to have the effect of being piping hot. I lit some incense and placed it behind the cup, out of view of the camera, and backlit the scene. The effect worked well, and the client was happy, but the effect on me was more captivating. The more I looked at the different images of the smoke, the more I realized that each image had a different story to tell

In science this field is known as fluid dynamics, the study of how liquids and gases move. I was interested in how each swirl, stream and cloud of smoke takes on a life of its own.

One afternoon, I set up my studio to backlight smoke. I bought plenty of incense and some stick matches and proceeded to capture about 400 still life images. The whole session took roughly 20 minutes.

After airing out the studio, I began examining the images. The project took on a greater life inside Photoshop. I discovered that by manipulating the images— copying, pasting, flipping and mirroring them—they became something like the inkblot tests psychologists use. [Editor’s note: The Rorschach inkblot test is a personality test in which a subject’s interpretations of 10 abstract designs are analyzed to measure emotional and intellectual functioning. The test is named after Hermann Rorschach who developed the inkblots.]

Your mind and your imagination allow you to see many things within the images, and each individual person will see something different.

It’s like the childhood game of lying on your back in the cool grass on a warm summer’s day and staring at the clouds— all of a sudden you imagine a parade of elephants, monkeys and rabbits marching across the sky.

I think that these smoke images are a little more intense, though. The whole exercise resulted in 25 art pieces that will be exhibited in the near future.

Craig Kienast will be presenting a program at WPPI 2006 on Sunday, April 9, in BALLY’s Silver Room. The program is entitled, “One of a Kind Artistry,” and is scheduled for 8:30–10:30 a.m.