Tim Tadder - Smoke Umbrellas series

Tim Tadder, a photographic artist based in Southern California. He is a visual communicator who produces award-winning campaign work for top consumer brands. He creates highly-stylized action shots that draw viewers into the moment.

“I was inspired by a few Instagram accounts where I saw some smoke and umbrellas as loose props that were adding to complex scenes. I wanted to greatly simplify and stylize what they were doing and make it very, very graphic,” he explains. “Also, I wanted to add a René Magritte sense of style and an anonymous protagonist’s point of view.”

Tadder ended up compositing the smoke in many of the images completely: “We shot plates of smoke on black with one of the damaged umbrellas; that gave me the shape of the smoke to match with the umbrellas,” he explains. “With Adobe Photoshop CC, I put that layer over the subject and cloned out the umbrella on the plate, then masked in the umbrella of the talent on set. I used smoke brushes to paint the edges with sampled smoke, so the edge blends were natural.”

“That touching on perfection is what keeps me coming back for more,” he adds. “It's elusive but obtainable, and I will keep reaching for it. That's what's important: It's not the destination, it's the journey. We must remember that.”

All images ©Tim Tadder