Smoke - 1st Attempt

The smoke looks good. I might have cloned out the stick however.

Lighting looks good on the smoke and like tkerr said, clone out the stick and then clone out some of the less intense smoke, especially to the right.
One other thing that you could try is to invert the image so the background becomes white and the smoke takes on various different darker shades, you can then play with those colours as well.
There's a number of videos and the like on the net for photographing smoke, from setup and shooting to processing.

Hope to see more

I kind of like the look of the picture with the tip of the incense stick. To me, smoke photography has an "off" look when it doesn't have a source. I tried inverting the image, but since the incense stick is in the picture it didn't fit well. More will be coming soon, all different colors, some without the tip of the stick , and I look forward to more C&C. Thank you.