Smoke rings & photographing smoke

Was trying out lighting and came up with the following pictures...

 Setup: 5D3 + ST-E3-RT + 600EX-RT x2

One of the speedlites were placed behind the subject for the glowing effect with the other speedlite placed on the right of the subject (left of the picture)

I had the right speedlite set to zoom at 200mm to create a directional light to reduce lighting up the subject's face, and concentrate on only lighting the smoke rings up

2 Smoke RingsEXIF After multiple retries, was finally able to get two consecutive smoke rings in the frame.

Heart Smoke RingEXIF

What do we have here! A heart shaped smoke ring. Nice

From the smoke on the right of the subject (left of picture), you can still see other smoke being lit up by the other speedlite

Tips for photographing smoke rings

• Use manual focus - focus to a pre-planned distance and shoot the smoke rings when it falls into the focus range
• Use some kind of lighting / strobes / flash - light is required to capture the smoke as it is very much transparent
• Contrasty background/foreground - To show the smoke as its transparent in color. Most of the time you might be able to capture the smoke, is just that you can't see it