Smokin' photos!

Last night I took some shots of smoke. Anyone can do this with a remote strobe (or other bright light source), and a stick of incense; set the strobe behind and a little below the smoke, make sure it's dark and you have a black background if possible (though not imperative, I shot these w/out a black sheet or anything), put your camera on a tripod and fire away!

Tips:

Put your settings on a high F-stop, and if possible, a high shutter speed and low ISO.

Obviously your camera will have trouble focusing in the dark, I recommend focusing and THEN turning out the lights, or (what I did) focus on the glowing tip of the incense and move the frame upward a little.

Experiment! I took over 400 shots in about an hour, and wound up with only 3-5 favorites:

This is actually my desktop now. It reminds me of the incredible graphics in the iTunes commercials.

A very close contender for a favorite, I think it looks like a woman with long hair.