Exploring the Arbitrary Creation of Meaning Through Smoke Photography

How perception shapes the familiar in the unfamiliar, from smoke patterns to everyday life.

This story was published in Full Frame and featured on Medium, so I'm sharing it again here for Substack readers.

Here I saw the portrait of a cow. The head is shown in profile, facing left, with the eye and the orbital arch clearly visible. There’s also a rounded snout with hints of a mouth and nostrils. Photo by Davor Katusic.

A Journey into Smoke’s Familiar Faces

A photograph of smoke is an experimental type of photography that caught my attention mainly because of the creative freedom I found in searching for familiar shapes and meanings in the randomly formed patterns of smoke.

The idea to photograph smoke came to me unexpectedly during a break between two video shoots. I had left the studio lights on and lit a cigarette. As I exhaled, I noticed how the smoke rose toward the light beam, dancing and forming unexpected shapes, some of which reminded me of fantastic creatures from fairy tales, mythology, or deep, dark ocean depths.

Here I saw a mystical being resembling a god or a wise man. In the upper part of the image, I saw a bright forehead, under which are darker eyes and nose, and below that, a long beard extending to the bottom of the photo. Photo by Davor Katusic.

At first, I was fascinated to see shapes that reminded me of fantastic creatures one might expect to find in dreams, fairy tales, or the depths of the ocean. However, at the same time, I realized that these shapes don’t actually exist—they are simply products of my imagination. This process led me to deeper questions about how we create meaning in everyday life. Do we truly see what’s in front of us, or only what we expect or want to see?

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin

This image reminds me of a tree frog, holding onto some kind of branch and looking to the left. In the upper left part, I see a head in profile with a prominent eye and mouth. Photo by Davor Katusic.

The Illusion of Meaning: How Our Minds Create What We See

This habit of recognizing familiar shapes reminds me of our natural urge to find the familiar in the unfamiliar, much like how we see faces in clouds, identify constellations in the stars scattered across the night sky, or recognize patterns in the Rorschach blot.

However, we must acknowledge that these shapes don’t truly exist. They are arbitrary creations of our imagination and personal interpretations, which can vary from person to person, as demonstrated in these smoke photos.

I was surprised when I showed my smoke photographs to friends and they couldn’t see the shapes I had easily recognized. I was certain they would see them too because they seemed so obvious to me. At first, I wanted to prove that my interpretation was correct and theirs was wrong, but then I realized that we were all right — and none of us were right at the same time. Ultimately, all the shapes we recognize are illusions, because it’s all just smoke.

Here I saw a disc-shaped, vertically elongated tropical fish. In the bottom left, there is the mouth, from which a curved line extends over the forehead to the dorsal fin at the top of the image. I see the eye in the round shadow in the upper left part of the image. Photo by Davor Katusic.

If we apply this idea of creating arbitrary shapes in smoke to the real world, we come to an interesting question:

Do We Perceive Reality or Our Expectations?

Just like we find shapes in smoke that mean something to us, in the real world, we also find meaning through our “lenses”, which are colored by our experiences. What one person sees as obvious and clear can be completely unrecognizable to another.

For example, two people can observe the same event and come to completely different conclusions about its meaning. One person sees an opportunity, while the other sees a threat. One sees the glass as half full, while the other sees it as half empty.

This phenomenon is also present in relationships, where we often interpret the actions and intentions of others based on our own expectations and values, which can sometimes lead to misunderstandings. We should remember this the next time we get into a disagreement, no matter how sure we are that we are right and the other person is wrong.

Here, I saw a wise snow owl. In the upper part of the image, I saw the nose and eyes of the owl, and below that, a long body resembling a wise man’s beard. Photo by Davor Katusic.

Beneath Perception: Questioning the Nature of Reality

Photographing smoke has taught me that there are different interpretations than mine and that none of them are superior or inferior because all interpretations are subjective, not objective.

Just as there is no cow, fish, or wise man in these smoke photographs — because it’s all just smoke — perhaps in the real world, we can’t be entirely certain that anything we are accustomed to truly exists. Just as smoke lies beneath the shapes we see in the photographs, maybe something else lies beneath our perceptions in the real world, but unlike smoke, we are unaware of it.

So, the question remains:

Can we view the subjective reality we’re used to, with its meanings, relationships, and distinctions, as objective? Or is there a deeper, more objective reality that we don’t see, but we all share?

In this smoke photograph I recognized the portrait of a friendly dragon flicking its tongue. The image highlights the contours of a head resembling a dragon, facing left, with the tongue extending toward the bottom left corner. Photo by Davor Katusic.

Equipment and Techniques Behind Smoke Photography

For these photos, I used a Fujifilm XH-2 camera combined with a Sigma 56mm 1.4 lens. The light source was a Godox 60W lamp at full intensity, directed through a plastic cover with a hole that created a narrow beam of light. I used a dark fabric as the background, which highlighted the subtle outlines of the smoke.

I edited the photos in Lightroom, using tools like crop, dehaze, blacks, highlights, clarity, and denoise. These settings helped me bring out the desired shape and enhance the contrast between the bright parts of the smoke and the dark background, creating dramatic visual effects that highlight the familiar shapes I recognized in the clouds of smoke.

Thank you for reading my story.