Smoke trails - creative photography technique

• Incense sticks
  If this is the first time you've bought some find a pack that includes a wooden holder to keep the stick in position. You can use Blu Tack if you don't have a purpose-built holder.
• A black background
  Material works fine, but preferably choose a material that absorbs light such as black velvet. Avoid highly inflamable material.
• Light source
  Use an off-camera flash or other source of off camera lighting. I've only tried it with the portable flash so can't comment on anything else. Other members on the site have used studio flash. Both will work fine. If you use a continuous light source it need to be powerful to allow a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the smoke.
• Lightbox
  I use a lightbox as a underlight, although this is optional.

1 If you're using a lightbox place the incense on top of it so the light shines up through the smoke.

2 Place the black background behind the incense stick in holder. The background in my set up is roughly 6in away, but it can be further.

3 Attach the camera to a tripod or suitable support approx 12 -18in away from the incense stick. The narrow depth-of-field of some lenses means focusing needs to be very acurrate so to help make sure the camera is at a similar level and parallel to the rising smoke.

7 Set the lens to manual focus and adjust to get a sharp result. A piece of card with detail on it positioned in the centre of the smoke for a moment will help you focus. If your camera only has autofocus you may need to pre focus and use the focus lock.

8 When the photos have been taken upload to your PC and open in your image editing program. I've used Photoshop CS.

9 Rotate if necessary, then go to Image> Adjustments>Invert. The background becomes white and the smoke black.