From Rich Legg, digital photography enthusiast:

What you are seeing is a capture of a lightbulb in the process of burning out. To create the shot, my friend Harley and I removed the glass enclosure of a standard household lightbulb (while leaving the innards intact) and powered it up in a pitch black room. The result was an immediate burn-out … The red hue on the smoke was added in post-processing.

See an enlarged view of the image here ^[2].

[tags]leggnet, Rich Legg, light bulb, scott baradell[/tags]