Getting A Dark Cinematic Look At Mid Day With Hypersync And ND Filters

Ever wondered how photographers get this cinematic look with wide open shutter at mid-day? One easy way is to increase the shutter speed to block some light out. The other is to shoot an octopus munching on a beautiful model.

The problem is that if it is bright enough, you may find yourself still at 1/1000 shutter speed, which is (usually) not syncable with a strobe. Photographer Benjamin Von Wong does a walk through over his blog about hyper-syncing which is a technique that allows high shutter speed photographing using Pocketwizard TT5 triggers and Elinchrom Ranger Quadras to shoot at speeds beyond the native sync speed.

The walk through also covers slow speed sync in mid day using ND filters and strobes and gelling for effect. Of course this is done for a reason: smooth water with frozen face.

The other side of the story is the emotional one, where model Jen Brook tells the story of how and why this picture came to be. well worth the read if you want to expand to the whys in addition to the hows.

[An octopus, hypersync and some neutral density filters ft. Jen Brook | Von Wong, Jen Brook]