Happy New Year, happy new decade

Thank you all for your interest, work, collaboration and support this year.. I wish you all the very best for the new year, and the new decennium!

click on the image to see a larger version (and again for even larger).
Yes, the 2010 is in smoke as well...

New Smoke Photography - gift ideas?

I have updated my smoke photography gallery, and have also split it up in two: 'smoke' and 'smoke and mirrors'. Images in the latter gallery are symmetric due to the mirroring of the original picture upon itself.

All of the smoke images can be purchased and delivered to your address. Metallic paper works really well for the smoke pictures, but I can now also offer acrylic prints and canvas prints, or even on metal. Could be just the right gift for the upcoming holidays. I will soon upload some pictures of each of the print types.

Here are some of my new works.. while quite different from each other, there's a common thread (almost literally).. to me both look like underwater somehow.. one quite abastract, the other representing a couple in which the female is probably a mermaid.. though that's just my interpretation, feel free to see other things in it!

I have uploaded some more new work and they are (for about 30 days) marked with the 'new' label in the galleries. Feel free to leave me some feedback, or contact me for more information on how to buy one of the smoke pictures.

Just a bit over a week till Aqua Art Miami now - come visit booth 41 from December 3rd to 6th and see some of my work in person!

More on Aqua Art Miami

As you can see on the screenshot, we're featured on the AquaArt Miami website now, under AleatoricArt

My smoke pictures will be shown in the AleatoricArt booth (41) among art of Martin Waugh, J Coleman-Miller, Ray Cabarga, Ted Lincoln, Allan Rodewald, Volborth/Miller, Reed Ghazala, Howard Pugh and professor Alex Volborth, who passsed away on October 30th; the show will have a retrospective of some of his art.

Take some time to have a look at these sites and be amazed. Also check out the other AleatoricArt artists, whose work will be displayed on 2 large flatscreens as well in booth 41.

Smoke Photography on Aqua Art Miami

The location for the exhibition changed from the Marlin Hotel to Aqua Art Miami 2009 - Booth 41 !


If you're going to Art Basel Miami 2009 from December 3rd to 6th, don't forget to drop by Aqua Art Miami for a great exhibition of Aleatoric Art The Movement of Aleatoric Modern Artists is doing its first group show to introduce the movement and its artists to the public and the art world. Among the works of about 10 artists you will also be able to see (and buy) my smoke photography.
With over 60,000 art lovers visiting Art Basel Miami, this is a great opportunity for a lot of people to discover our work.. and my smoke art! If you're near Miami, make sure to come by, and tell everyone you know !


If you want to have a sneak preview of the artists and some of their work, take a look at our catalog (if you wish to purchase a copy of this book, let me know)

Smoke picture selected for cover of Aleatoric Art catalog

The Movement of Aleatoric Modern Artists (MAMA) has created a catalog to represent some of the work of its members. My work 'Boy and his new Balloon' was selected for the cover of the publication.

Inside the catalog each page has a work and some text, and next to Boy and his new Balloon, this is the text, written by Ray Cabarga:

A patient stalker of moments

The law of averages dictates that even amidst confusion and chaos, there is an equal change that perfection and harmony prevail- if only for a fleeting instant.

Imagine if your perception was so acute that you could divide every thought in your mind an infinite number of times and observe the process of thinking itself. You might discover, with every thought, one instant where you were a genius and another in which you were insane. And what if you could see every possibility in every moment and had the time to choose the right one.

Stoffel De Roover's smoke art photography transcends time and space to effectively capture the intangible and allow us to appreciate what otherwise would have been lost forever in an endless procession of moments in transition. He will stake out a billow of smoke and, with laser precision, ambush the ephemeral gauze at the precise moment when it unwittingly does his bidding.

You can see the online copy of the catalog here

Featured in Smashing Magazine's "50 Incredible Photography Techniques and Tutorials"

Smashing Magazine has published an overview of 50 incredible photography techniques and tutorials in which many great articles are linked.

Number 7 is "Smoke Art Photography" and along with some other interesting articles it mentions my name and links to the recent interview that was published on Digital Photography School. It also links to the Make blog which links to lumendipity.com, and the picture used you should recognize from my portfolio..

Widespread Panic t-shirt with 'Gemini' smoke picture

I finally got to taking a picture of the t-shirts Widespread Panic did for their tour, with my Gemini smoke picture on it. The text reads "Her dance needs no body"

If you're interesting in buying this t-shirt, you can go to their merchandise website.
Or if you want another t-shirt design with one of my smoke pictures, let me know.

Smoke Photography - How to : Interview published

Digital Photography School interviewed me about how to get started with smoke photography..

It starts: Here at DPS we are always on the look out for photographic techniques that are pushing the boundaries of the medium. This week I’m excited to highlight Stoffel De Roover as he gives us a window into the amazing world of “Smoke Art Photography”

Read the rest of the article here


Thanks to Chas Elliott, who did the interview.

Smoke art - Homage to Magritte

For those of you who don't know Rene Magritte, he was a famous Belgian surrealist painter (1898-1967) with his most known works showing illusions, things that are not what they seem. The bowler hat should look familiar, and also the picture of the pipe with the inscription 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' (This is not a pipe), referring to the fact that is not a pipe, just a depiction of a pipe.

Working on a smoke picture of my last batch, I noticed something that reminded me of Magritte's typical bowler hat, and even a suit, seeing the potential of a picture that could look like the work 'Son of Man' or even more like the work in the background on Magritte's portrait by photographer Lothar Wolleh, so I decided to develop it and make it a homage to Magritte..

In the picture on the left, I give you a glimpse behind the scenes, how this picture came to being, from a single photo of smoke, with a crop, mirror effect and some editing into the idea of a man in a suit and a bowler hat.

I hope you like it, and maybe take the time to look into Magritte's work, and also photographer Lothar Wolleh.

Smokin' Q no longer

For a bit less than a year, 12 of my works had been hanging in the Smokin' Q, a BBQ restaurant on 63rd Street in NYC. Unfortunately the restaurant is closing its doors, so you're only chance to see the works in that restaurant now is on the pictures below..

If you know of a new place to exhibit these works in New York, let me know.

Featured on Aleatoric Art website - MAMA: Movement of Aleatoric Modern Artists

Since the beginning of this week I am featured on www.aleatoricart.com with my smoke photography as one of the so far 12 artists. The site and the man behind it, artist J. Coleman Miller, will promote Aleatoric Art to the art community starting from early 2009, and the site is being geared up to offer some visibility on our work.

Some of the text:

Take a deep breath of pure creativity as you venture into the smoky corners of the uniquely creative mind of Stoffel De Roover. Do not pass up this great opportunity to see one of the most basic elements of natural aleatoric composition rendered like you have never seen before. This artist proves that nobody does fractals like mother nature!
There are a lot of artists blowing smoke out there, but De Roover's level of abstraction, using little manipulation and employing creative use of titles, elevates his work to the realm of fine art.

and on the Artist Page:

The talented man at left is, at this point in time, floating in a creative
haze... One look at this artist's beautiful abstract prints will definitely put
you under the influence of his unique imagination.

In 2007, Stoffel was taken by surprise by a simple wisp of smoke he had
just photographed... There in the fog was the outline of a woman, the
first breathtaking image (and the catalyst) of the resulting onslaught of his
superbly crafted series of aleatoric artwork.

Addicted to his newfound palette of ever changing and never ending
content, the artist lit up the incense and snapped away, as nature herself
composed with a free hand. A true aleatoric artist never knows what his
next piece will be, and with subject matter ranging from beautiful
goddesses to scary creatures, this series is an incredible collection of
chance art that must be seen!

De Roover was born in Leuven, Belgium, where he began his studies. He
moved around, first to the Netherlands, then to the United States and on
to France where he lived for about 7 years, earning his MSc, before moving
with his wife and two children to Montreal in 2006, where he now resides.

Since he unveiled his Smoke Photography in 2007, De Roover's work has
been featured in SNAP Magazine, UK, a NYC restaurant, on Southern Rock
band Widespread Panic's T-shirts, and on LifeInTheFastLane.com, where
we at AleatoricArt found him. Learn more about this smokin' hot artist at
his website and blog by clicking HERE.

check out the Aleatoric Art website yourself!

Widespread Panic - my smoke photography for band's T

'Gemini' touring soon...

The southern rock / jam band Widespread Panic (sold over 3 million CD's) has purchased a license to print my smoke picture 'Gemini' on their t-shirts, to be sold on tour and probably on their website as well... From what I heard the picture will only be printed in women's t-shirts, so no luck for the guys.
More information soon, and a picture of the t-shirt as soon as it's ready!


more information on Widespread Panic: band's website and wikipedia

Ganesha - the Elephant-Headed God

As hinduism is one of the first religions to make use of insence to worship their gods, it shouldn't come as a surprise that in one of my latest smoke pictures I saw Ganesha, the elephant headed god, in a lotus position..
Then again, maybe you see something else? Maybe a one-seater couch with a heart as the back or pillow?

Facebook Group

For those of you who have facebook, and like my photography... now is a good time to Join my Facebook Group

Smoke Photography Exhibition coming up...

A selection of 12 works of my smoke photography will be exhibited in a new, smokin' hot restaurant in Manhattan. The pictures, ranging from 10x15 inches to 20x30 inches in size, matted and framed, will be for sale on location.
The restaurant will open soon, more details to follow!

Happy New Year!

Best wishes for 2008!

Smoke photography in the news...

Today some of my pictures were featured in the London edition of the Metro newspaper.. I was told the quality of the pictures was better in the paper than on the PDF I received..

if you want to have a better look at the pictures, check out the smoke photography gallery

Two weeks ago, there was a more extensive article about my photography on Life in the Fast Lane, you can read it here.

Smoke Art Movie Characters

After the Schwarzenegger image a while back, some more movie characters in smoke.. at least that's what I saw in these smoke pictures.. let me know what you think:

Nikopol from "Immortel (Ad Vitam)" (see info & picture of movie here)

Gizmo from the Gremlins:

You can reply on me to spot the stars in smokey environments...

for more smoke pictures, have a look at the gallery and smoke photography gallery.

Smoke Photography & Stardust

On one of my smoke shoots, some dust was falling and it reflected the light of my flash when I took pictures... The results looks like stars, stardust, and give a little extra to the smoke pictures. The one picture doesn't have much editing done to it, the other was mirrored with the previously discussed technique.

For those who haven't seen my other smoke pictures yet, I have made a dedicated gallery page.. check out my smoke photography

If you want to have some more information on how smoke photography works, check my previous blog articles and start with the February archive...

If you are interested in buying some of my work, smoke photography or other, or if you have any other feedback, please contact me

Celebrity Spotting in Smoke Photography

When I was done with this picture, I thought this looked like a movie poster for some sci-fi movie starring Arnold Schwarzenneger as the astronaut/alien hero, and two Bond girls... I never stop being amazed at what can be discovered in smoke...

Queen of Hearts and Gemini

Here are some of my latest smoke pictures.. The technique is still the same as the one described in my earlier posts, in short: smoke picture, mirroring, erasing excess smoke, selective colouring. For more detailed information, check my earlier posts.


For 'Queen of Hearts' I first intended to only use the heart shape.. but when working on it, I thought the other smoke looked like hair and that's how I 'discovered' the queen of hearts...

The other picture is called Gemini, for obvious reasons I guess..


Let me know what you think..

What do you see in the smoke?

I usually post my pictures to some photography forums, and when I posted this picture, I asked people what they see in it.. I love how people see different things and sometimes they make me see angles on my pictures that I hadn't noticed before.

Here are some of the responses I received, let's see if you can see it all.. or let me know if you see something else!

• I see a horse on the right, but I can't decipher anything immediately besides that.



• I think i see a dog or some other four legged creature in the third pic.



• in the last pic i see a snake (on the right) and some like of little dog on the left



• I see a green haired ghoul with a red violin in outstretched arms.



• I see a blue squid like creature eating a pink shrimp like creature. Or I see and alien, presenting a new born to his family.Or I see a prehistoric creature with no arms or torso (just a head with legs) punting a pink creature. There are so many possibilities.



• I see a screenshot from the movie the Lion King where a monkey holds the new born Simba up high for all others in the pack to see....



• Mother with child :-)



• I see an alien holdig a very large rat.

My Smoke Pictures featured in SNAP magazine

A couple of my pictures have been featured in the May issue of SNAP magazine, with an article about me. My first publication in the press!

You can download the lite version of the magazine, or buy the full version here

Smoke Photography & archeology

Maybe this title isn't that relevant, but sometimes it feels like digging and digging, until you finally stumble on something... some delicate handling and cleaning before the piece is ready to be shown... This time it looks like I discovered some ancient duck-like animal. Or is it an X-ray of a dog?

I think I'm almost done with the raw materials I have, so I may be shooting some more smoke soon...

Coloured Smoke Pictures

What can I say.. smoke photography is quite addictive. Using the 'mirroring' technique, I've created the below images, and this time used some digital crayolas to add some colour. Non-destructive with hue & saturation adjustment layers & masks, so I can always go back and change colours if I feel like it..

I've named the first one the Alien Boss, and the second one Scary Smoke.. One person told me the first looks like some strange totem pole, and someone else told me the second one is the X-ray that proves Predator's existense. That's one of the fun parts of this: everybody can see something slightly (or totally) different.. what do you see in my pictures?

Very Abstract Smoke Photography

As I didn't have much time to take new pictures, I'm still editing some of my smoke pictures and I can tell you, it is quite addictive.

Using the mirroring technique as mentioned in my previous post, I came up with this very abstract picture. It almost looks like a drawing or digital art I think, and most people will probably not think this is actually based on a photograph of smoke patterns (unless they have read my previous posts before).

What do you think, is this too abstract for photography? Or would you even think this is photography?

Just to give you an idea, I'm also posting the original shot, with no editing done at all.

More Smoke Photography

I’ve been playing with my smoke pictures again this weekend, and found some more interesting shapes and forms.
One of them just stood out to me and I’ll call it ‘the Sorcerer’. Don’t know if you see the same thing as I do… I had to do some cropping and cloning to remove smoke patterns that didn’t help the picture, to bring out the shape better.


I went through all the pictures again, rotated each picture just in case, and couldn’t find any other familiar shapes worth working on. So I decided to try another editing technique: mirroring.


At first, I tried some images by duplicating the image, flipping it, and moving it next to the original image (so in effect, the total picture size was doubled). In some cases I first cropped the image before duplicating, so the end result would be more appealing. Have a look at an example here.



Then I moved to a slightly different technique: duplicating the image, flipping it, and setting blending to ‘lighten’ and leave it on top of the original. This has the advantage of bringing everything that’s left of the center to the right and vice versa. Examples below.













I’m not done yet with playing with these pictures, I still have to try out blending in other images.. but this is it for now.

Smoke Experiments - how to photograph smoke

Two weeks ago I read a very interesting article/tutorial on photographing smoke on the photocritic.org blog with some excellent pictures by Graham Jefferey. Amazed by the smoke pictures. I decided to give it a try and test my new off-camera flash cord at the same time.



The setup:

A black sweater pulled over a chair served as my background, and the little box the flash cord came in served as my snoot, to avoid light spilling on my background and making it… not black.

When you set up, make sure you don’t have anything nearby that will reflect light from your flash on the background.

With the lights on, and the camera on the tripod, I focused on an object I held at the spot where I would be having the smoke, and then flipped my lens to manual focus. With a small aperture, this step may be a bit less important, but I just wanted to play safe. I tested with larger apertures as well.

I turned the main lights off to reduce the chance of light reflecting on my background (as this wasn’t a very professional set-up) and just had some small light source in the room so I wouldn’t bump into things.

The shooting:

A smoking incense stick in one hand, a flash and remote shutter release in the other, at about 90 degrees, the fun could start. I moved the incense stick in varying ways to get different smoke patterns. Now and then I checked the picture on my camera to make sure of what’s in the frame, so I wouldn’t have the stick in all my images, or miss out on the smoke. Try different exposure settings, different flash angles and keep shooting until you’re tired, your stick stops smoking, or your flash runs out of batteries.
And then you’ll have to clean up the ashes that fell on the floor in the process…

The editing:

Getting back at the computer I was amazed. Smoke patterns can be so beautiful and diverse! I had to throw some pictures out immediately because out of focus, totally black or not of interest. Remember at this point that you can crop, rotate and play with levels to increase the wow-factor of some images. On most images I just did that, for some others I cloned some of the excess smoke away. On one of the pictures, I saw what looked like a female figure, so I took away some excess smoke to bring it out better. A couple of days later I renewed the experience, and had another image with a more alien-like figure. What’s next?

As suggested in the photocritic.org article I changed the hue on some pictures as well, and inverted some others. I felt that for my pictures the black background works better so I didn’t invert many. I will surely repeat this experiment from time to time, and I suggest you give it a try as well. Or just enjoy the beautiful smoke images that are out there on the web.
Several people have suggested that I blend in other images with these smoke pictures, and that will definitely be a project to work on.

Thanks to Graham and photocritic.org for the article and information!