finally adding the more serious stuff
Wow, thanks you for the DD suggestion and all the nice comments! Highly appreciated!

So, now for the questions of how it was accomplished:
incense cone, camera on tripod ~50cm from the incense cone, black backdrop ~1m behind the incense cone and most importantly: flash from the side, triggered with a wireless remote. everything else can be seen in the EXIF data.
Hope that helps.. and as soon as you have some used old flash and a remote trigger, the rest is pretty simple. :>
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Have a nice day!
Administrator of #Abstract-and-Surreal
Have a nice day!
congrats on the well deserved DD