Capturing Motion with Long Exposures

Long exposure photography allows a picture to build up over time. That’s exactly what you want when your subject is moving and you need to show all that movement in a single still photo. This is a surprisingly simple technique that’s perfect for sports portraits or in this case dance photography. In his small home studio (just 15 feet wide) photographer, Gavin Hoey starts by hanging up a makeshift black background. For lighting, he uses a continuous LED to capture the dancers’ moves during a long exposure. A Flashpoint Xplor400 is then added to freeze the dancer with a burst of flash. The key to making all this work is using a camera setting called slow sync flash, which is also known as 2nd curtain sync flash. Different name, same results. Luckily Gavin takes you through all of the information you need to recreate this shot at home. By the end of the video, you'll understand how and why combining two very different light types creates such amazing and beautiful dance photos.