Photographing The Movement Of Dancers Using Speedlights And Long Exposure

Photographer, Phillip McCordall, has put together a great video tutorial explaining the how he uses a combination of studio lighting, slow shutter speeds, and rear curtain sync to create almost atmospheric photographs of dancers, such as the photo you see above. While there are many applications in which you can use this technique on, the graceful leaps of the dancer are really eye catching when you are able to illustrate the motion of them, too.

If you’re not already familiar with rear curtain sync, this could be a really fun project for you learn it with. To put it briefly, when shooting with a rear curtain sync, the flash will fire at the end of the exposure rather than the beginning of the exposure. When used with a slow shutter speed, this allows you to record motion (as a blur) using only the ambient light at the beginning of the exposure, then right before the shutter closes, the flash will fire and freeze the motion.

This kind of technique is exactly what McCordall breaks down for us in the video below. (And don’t forget to check out his DIY reflectors at about the 2:37 mark!)