Smoke gets in your eyes (and your lungs)...

These challenges are just that...challenging! One day the topic was "smoke". I never really thought about it before, but it's not that easy to capture. The recommendation was to try with incense. Can I just say how much I HATE incense! But I gave it a whirl...nearly gave myself an asthma attack too. And tho' I did manage to capture some smoke, I wasn't too happy with any of my shots. All too noisy. I needed more light. So I went a different route...locked myself in the master bathroom (only room where I can get total darkness in the daytime) and lit and blew out this candle over and over until I got some decent smoke. I had a pile of matches when I was done! But I'm pretty happy with the result. This was my first time to add a colored filter (in post processing) and I decided I like how the red enhances the smoke.
If you have a few minutes, check out the group pool from that day. There are some amazing smoke photos as well as a link to a tutorial.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/odc_the_new_one/discuss/72157626395847272/