Three Sets of Awesome Vapor and Smoke Photos

Vapor or smoke photo manipulations have been gaining popularity in the visual arts field these days. It's been a long-time technique in creating otherworldly effects in photos, but the use of vapor or smoke seems more frequent recently because of the rising trend in vaping, which is a less harmful alternative option to smoking. Here are three sets of artworks that were inspired by the beauty of vapor or smoke.

Mehmet Ozgur's SmokeWorks

According to his personal website, Mr. Ozgur holds BS, MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering and "has extensive analog and digital photography experience." Born in Europe, studied in Asia, Mehmet is now working in Reston, Virginia, USA. Mehmet is an engineer who is fascinated by nature both technically and aesthetically. The techniques exhibited in his portfolio have evolved in last 20 years from analog darkroom to digital darkroom. He has won several international photography awards. His pictures have received more than 10 million hits online since 2004.

Stefano Bonazzi's Smoke Series

These magnificent artworks by Bonazzi merged the naked beauty of the human body with the ethereal form of smoke and vapor. These photos were not part of an anti-smoking campaign. According to this blog post on the artist's website, the images represented the suffering of humankind. The original article is in Italian, but here is an excerpt translated into English:

Over black, bodies, of a very dark gray-white, disintegrate, dissolve in the air. They in smoke, fade, to disappear gradually. The postures adopted by its models are those of suffering, abandonment, of defeat. The bodies are doomed to disappear. Twisted, kneeling, bent, curled, they burn. Man is fallen, it is weakening. He is dying. Suffering is nagging, pervasive evil in action. But silence reigns when everything is dying slowly.

The rest of the photos can be seen online here.

Vape Geek's Vapor Art

In these photos, the artist focused on the aesthetics of burning up the coils and watching the wick catch fire. The ugly experience of destroying one's drip setup is replaced by arresting visuals - colorful smoke rising from the cotton wick and hot embers zinging from the burning metal. These photos were posted by Vape Geek in one of the more popular vaping forums.