Variations on a theme - Smoke

Thank you very much for your comment.
I have just uploaded the base photo for this series of images.

It is smoke from an incense stick.
As you say, the symmetry is quite simple.
The colour comes from gradients in Photoshop.
The smaller images are repeats of the main image, which then have different gradients applied.
All layers are then blended together in screen mode.
Some masking was used to tidy up the overlap between different layers.
I hope this answers your question.