26/365: Backyard Rave

I find myself struggling with content again. It's been said, if you want to take interesting pictures, put interesting things in front of your camera. Or become a more interesting person...

Ok, fair enough, but I live (and work from home) in Mebane, NC. Lovely town, but I really don't know anybody here except some good neighbors (and there's some pics coming of them). Wifey doesn't especially like having her pictured blasted to the world here (although you all have confirmed what I told her many times yesterday, that she takes a GREAT picture), and I can only put myself in my pictures so many times, having only two 'looks': Blue Steel and Stunned Ranger. If I lived in a city, or had friends that I saw more often than Friday, I would have them to photograph at least. And I have, every time I have been somewhere other than this computer on any given night. Another problem is my current challenge: to design and use lights in every picture I post. So landscapes are out, for now. I have various objects of interest sitting around, and they will eventually fall under my camera's gaze, but I really like taking pictures of PEOPLE. Ok, so I'm complaining about not having a life, apparently.

Lacking content tonight, I decided to go for technique and trickery again. Rita helped me demonstrate some multi-strobic flash.

Even though we call these lights I've been using 'strobes' they usually only flash once per exposure. However, when you set them to the 'multi-strobic' setting, they do like the strobe lights in a club: fast repeating bursts. With the Canon strobes I'm using, you set the frequency and total number of pulses, then base your camera's shutter speed on that. For example, in this frame I set the number of pulses to 6, with a frequency of 2 hertz, or 2 per second. Therefore, I need at least a 3 second exposure to catch them all.

So. Lock the camera on a tripod. Minimize any other ambient light that will burn in over the 3 second exposure (turn off the porch light). Minimize the flash's light spill on any inanimate objects in the frame, like the trees and the ground. Not moving, these objects build up their exposure on the camera's sensor (or film, whatever) with each flash pop, and will get really bright, whereas any moving objects (Rita and ball) only get exposed in the location(s) they are in when the flash pops. If the background gets any light, it will expose thru the dark areas of your moving subject as well.

So basically, multi-strobic flash is an interesting way to capture movement over time. Add a constant light source to the moving object (like a headlamp to Rita's collar), and you can track the movement in two ways in the same frame. Only problem is that since it is completely dark, Rita may have some trouble actually finding the ball as it bounces around (although to be fair, she's not much better in the daytime). The strobiness may also make the neighbors think you're having a rave in the back yard, and the repeated flash bursts may even cause you or the dog to throw up a little, or seize like a kid watching Pokemon. And you may just spend an hour in the cold dark without ever getting the dog to jump up like you want, and making a lot of semi-interesting frames that still aren't what you are trying for (stickler's note: she's not wearing the collar lamp in these frames).

And you may accidentally trigger the remote as you go grab the light stand with headlamp attached that you used for a focus aid. Change shirts, man.

If at this point you haven't been too geeked out, and now you want to see a master do this correctly, you can watch Old Joe McNally do it with more style, and more ballerinas, here. I had been wanting to try this for some time, but he beat me to it. And damn, he has a lot more flashes than I do...