For this image I set up a table with a small shot glass, put a stick of incense in the glass and and lit it. Behind the table was a sheet of black vinyl paper as it is called. I have a flash outfitted with a magmod system and this was mounted to the magmod grid to focus the light tightly. The flash was very close to the column of smoke and placed to the side at 90 degrees to the camera. I took hundreds of shots with the following:
Canon 6D Mark II
Canon 24-105 kit lens shot at the full extension of 105 mm
Shutter speed was 1/160 in keeping with 6D II flash sync speed
ISO 200
F/8 because that is the sweet spot for this lens and I wanted good DOF through and through the smoke

Out of the hundreds of shots I chose the ones with the most discernible shapes. After selecting a shot, I did basic edits in lightroom and then took it into lightroom to add a hue and saturation layer and then added a gradient layer, choosing this pre designed color pattern in Photoshop.

On Thursday it took first place for intermediate pictorial and best image of the month dozens of other shots that night at my local camera club so I was pretty psyched!