I agree that it would take a lot more effort to do it in camera but there's something amazing about capturing a shape that I'm sure my imagination couldn't come up with if I was creating these images on the computer. While it's now a lot faster than checking the negative after processing the film there's still the excitement of never knowing exactly what you are going to get with this kind of subject matter until you look at the replayed image.
In my mind I had the idea of being about to scrub back and forth with the mouse as the image rotates left and right very similar to 360˚ product photography. Eventually I'd like to create a series of at least 10 images equally as beautiful as the fourth image shown above.
Derryck, I agree.. there is something quite special about the unexpected nature of images like this. I found the same excitement with my underwater vortex and bubble photos some years ago.
I really enjoyed all your images and i think they are quite beautiful. I seem to recall seeing John Paul Caponigro using smoke in many of his recent images, so you may like to investigate these further.
I really like the way you use the black background so the smoke seems as if it is in a sort of suspendeed animation.... I had a similar effect with my underwater photos at night. Click the "Nature of Infinity portfolio at this link to see them.
my underwater photos at night.... but yours have a much more etherial, suspended, sensual quality
Julie