Playing with Smoke

I had seen some photos done using smoke from either cigarettes, incense, or candles, so I thought I'd give it a try using incense sticks. I set it up by putting a black background up , and then placing my incense stick about 3 or 4 feet in front of the background. I set up my camera (using the 50mm f/1.8) in front with my 580EX flash to the right of my camera aiming directly at my incense. I taped a piece of paper around the flash, so that it wouldn't have much fall off, and light only the incense, and not the background, at least as much as possible. I then shot using a fairly long exposure. I did some editing in photoshop as well.

Here were the results of my efforts: