Smoky

It smells like vanilla incense here now, but ah well. Two flashes, aiming diagonally a little towards the camera lighting a little smoke, a very high shutter and aperture (1/250th @ f/22) throws the background black, illuminating the smoke and stick only. From there, it's a matter of making hundreds of shots, and finding out the "perfect" one isn't even there... Ah well.

The weird colors come from applying V-shaped curves, rendering both blacks and whites as white, but midtones as blacks.