Work diary - Slow sync

Evaluation and Technique

During today's session I learnt how to take slow sync style photography. The class used a dark setting with a black backdrop behind the subject we were shooting, with two soft box lights shining onto the model. In order to capture motion blur in the photographs that I took,  I used the slow sync flash function found on the camera that tells the camera to shoot with a long shutter speed as well as firing the flash. This means I was able to get a relatively sharp shot of my main subjects in every image as well as get some ambient light from the background and foreground. I was able to alter the length of the shutter speed if I wanted a more effective motion blur in my photograph, but most of the time I used a 2 second shutter speed because there wasn't much action that I was shooting in the frame. I quite liked this photography technique, however don't think that I'll be using it and developing it into my personal project because I prefer the multiple flash technique. 

This is the first photograph that I took when experimenting with this new technique. I simply asked Connie to move to the left side of the frame whilst I had the shutter speed on two seconds. All I got from this setting was a faint duplicate of her next to her sharp, defined and clearer body shape. The faint duplicate has no light on her whatsoever; it blends in with the dark background and is filled with shadow. This contrasts with Connie's left body, the defined version. Here, there is more light situated on her because this is where the light is beaming. It has been  positioned to shine down on her in this part of the studio which means that everything about her is more visible. By using slow sync, the audience are able to see the past and present in one image. Movement can be captured and seen more clearly that just shaking a camera as I used to do before in order to shoot the formal element movement. This technique is an upgrade from that, and by far the most successful type of technique.

This is a picture that I took much later on in the shoot when I thought of a more interesting thing to capture for this technique. Because you have to shoot some form of movement in order to create slow sync photography, I thought of dancing. This led to me asking Connie and Frankie to perform a twirl. I was extremely pleased with what I produced from this shot because you can evidentaly see the movement of Connie's body as one of her is holding Frankie's hand whilst the other is spinning around. There are equal amounts of light on both of Connie's bodies in this frame, and likewise with Frankie's, as they are both dressed in light colours which allows the light to bounce off of them more effectively than if they were dressed in dark attire. The composition of this piece has been constructed well, except for a tiny part of the frame which I could have chopped off of the top perhaps.

Progression

If I was to progress this technique in my project I would like to look at photographing dancers; the female in a bright red dress with a glowing shine, and then the male in a suit, with illuminated light on them in order for them to stand out even more so against a black backdrop. This is something that I would like to do, however I'm not too sure it's something that I would do. Slow sync photography isn't really a technique I can see myself using in advertising because there's only so much you can do with people moving in a frame, and I'm most likely not going to be using many people in my pictures as a lot of my work will be based around places and products.