I recently experimented with smoke photography. I used incense on a stick to create my smoke. I used a black background, a small aperature, low ISO and alot of light. I had to be sure and point the light away from the background so I ddin't light it up. It is important to light the smoke directly. The better light you have on your smoke the better, more intricate designs you will see in your photographs. So I focused on an alternate subject and then set the camera on M focus, hooked up my shutter cable and began snapping away when I saw something interesting. I shot until my CF card was full. You never know what you actually get until you download and begin looking. Post processing is pretty simple. Crop, adjust background, invert image if you like it better, adjust your color using Hue and Saturation the way you like. I found this image from two separate shots taken during the same session. There are alot of websites that explain this process in more detail. Many of them have great examples of edited images.
I had a blast shooting this photograph. I had to shoot it in two different sessions because I tried to shoot without condensation and some addtional reflectors and it wasn't worth printing. I reshot using commercial ice, two light sources and a reflector instead of one, condensation, and a special reflector behind the bottle neck. The condensation was about 3 parts water and 1 part glycerin. I waxed up the bottle really good before I sprayed on the glycerin mixture. As you can see by the before and after shots, it was well worth the trouble to reshoot.
