Adding Subjects to Slow Shutter Shots

Adding subjects to a slow shutter click has given me a number of good shots. Slow shutter shots usually can be taken only at very low light conditions, unless we stack up multiple ND filters and shoot with a pin-like aperture. I usually have this habit of using external lights while clicking slow shutter. But it is not that we can’t add subjects without artificial lighting. And yes, in many cases, the on-camera flash ( perhaps the most hated light source in photo communities) can also give amazing results.

I am sharing two of my photographs, one without the use of any additional lighting equipment and the other only with the on-camera flash. And yes, we’ll see subjects added to the still slow shutter shots discussed in the previous post.

The Mediterranean Sea shot I had shared in the last blog-post was an extremely clichéd photograph . But however clichéd a photo idea may be, you add a face to it and it becomes uniquely distinct from all others. I asked my fellow traveler and author, Sachin Garg to get into the frame, clicked it again, and here I had Sachin shouting wow for the next couple of minutes. The only thing that we need to ensure in such photographs is that the model stays perfectly still throughout the exposure, or else we'll make him look like a ghost!!!

The jetty that I shared had a couple of birds moving around and it made a great photo opportunity.  In such cases, flashes come in handy. Flashes help by exposing the main subject just at the right instant and then the long exposure will make the surroundings and the sky look alright. I used the on-camera flash to freeze the bird (I would have loved to use two wirelessly triggered flash lights in such a situation, the result would have been amazing, but I had none in my bag). I locked my camera on a tripod, set the flash on front-shutter-sync, took manual focus of the jetty where I expected the birds to flutter, waited for them to open the wings, and clicked just as I saw them flutter. I got this after around two dozen attempts of 20 second exposures.

Stay tuned for more on using flash bulbs in the upcoming posts.

 -          The Wandering Viewfinder