Large candle on a chair covered in black velvet, lit from photographer's left shoulder with a 40W tungsten lamp and from immediately behind the candle pointing upwards with a 20W halogen mini light (shaded with cardboard) to light the smoke.
EF 28-135mm at 44mm.
Tripod mounted, no IS, manual focus.
Problem - getting the candle wax off the velvet afterwards!
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Nicely sharp pillar candle that has wonderful soft, warm tones. Composition is good, lighting is good, and the capture of the smoke is excellent as I've heard it is fairly difficult to capture/light smoke effectively.
I like your smoke wisp and the candle choice vs the black background, but if you were going for 'melted wax' there probably should have been a good deal more of it visible.
Not a terribly bad photo, but it doesn't do much for me. The title doesn't match the image. This looks like a brand new candle that you lit, snapped one quick picture and immediately put out. I don't see any "Hot Candlewax". Barely visible is a slight indentation where a bit of the candle melted. The smoke is okay...but you can see the beginning and end of it and it again proves my theory of "light it, snap it, put it out". The image also seems tilted too much CW. A slight CCW rotation of this image would straighten it up nicely. The black background is solid and nice. Hope this helps.
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