I recently moved all of my fire and smoke work out of my other portfolios, into their own section.
At NYC Fotoworks, as reviewers worked through my book, their reaction to the smoke and the fire stuff was usually something like:
"WHOAH.......................................................................huh."
People in a professional art-buying capacity seem challenged to figure out what to do with it, and I can't blame them. The pictures fit more easily into a fine art/decorative category than a potential editorial or an ad.
There were two exceptions: Popular Mechanics, and artist's rep Randy Cole. The editor at Popular Mechanics had just done a thing on burning marshmallows, which the editorial team had shot themselves, and I could see her working harder to figure out how to use my pictures. Randy Cole reps a photographer who experiments with special effect as well, and she told me about how she had led certain clients into using his techniques, not necessarily as the primary thing in the photograph, but as an embellishment to it.
Anyways. It sort of ends up confusing people more often than not, so I've just given it a home of it's own for now. Eventually, I'll get it to the point where it's stunning, beautiful, and useful.
