Fire breather at night

During my frog and reptile workshop in St. Louis, I offer the participants an opportunity to photograph a fire breather. I had always wanted to photograph a performance like this, and I assume other photographers would be as intrigued by this as I am. To expose correctly for this kind of thing at night is very tricky, so I did some test shots and came up with 1/400, f/8, and 640 ISO. Because the performer was wearing black, and because the fireball was so bright, I had to work with the highlight and shadows sliders in Adobe Camera Raw to prevent detail in the fire from being lost to overexposure and, at the same time, I had to retain detail in the dark shadows. Once this was done, I then added the reflection using the Photoshop plugin 'Flood 2'. To create this outrageous fireball, the performer -- with great force from his lungs -- blows a mouthful of finely purified oil across a torch he holds in his right hand.