Shoot sports with slow-speed flash

James Paterson gets his kicks creating slow-speed sync effects

- James Paterson

A burst of flash lets us freeze motion, and a long exposure lets us create motion blur. Both are great techniques, but if you’re looking for a creative approach to action shots, the slow-sync flash method lets us have it all in a single frame. Sometimes called shutter ‘dragging’, this is where we use a flash with a longer-than-normal exposure to introduce motion blur. It’s a great trick to try out for action or sports subjects, such as our Taekwondo expert. By using a combination of flash and gelled LED lighting, we can create gorgeous streaks of blur to convey the movement of the subject, along with a burst of flash to freeze the motion.

Whenever we use flash, we are effectively making two exposures in one. First there’s the flash exposure, where the subject is lit by the near-instant burst of light. But there’s also the ambient exposure, where the light in the scene – whether natural daylight, room lights or other artificial lighting – plays a part. Often the flash is so powerful that ambient light plays a negligible role in the overall exposure. But here, by stretching our shutter speed to several seconds, the divide is obvious. The ambient exposure creates the blur and the flash freezes the final movement of the subject. It might look like a Photoshop effect, but this is done entirely in-camera. There’s an element of trial and error in timing the motion of your subject and balancing the lighting, but when it all comes together, the results can be jaw-dropping.