Fine Art Photography Blog

The time the shutter stays open really doesn’t matter indoors when using a flash. A bright pulse lights up the room for 1/10,000 to 1/100,000 of a second; the shutter curtain seems glacial by this standard. Naturally, whether the shutter ’speed’ is 1/250 sec or 1/160 sec won’t amount to a noticeable difference. The flash has already frozen the scene in this case.

Outdoors, shooting with more ambient light, or a very reflective subject will change things. Your flash has a maximum sync speed listed in its specs telling you the fastest shutter speed you can get away with. Light will continue to flood your camera’s sensor even after the flash stops firing, and can ruin an exposure.

Taking advantage of this, find a dark scene to create a photo. Your subject should be in the ballpark of 18 % gray - lots of midtones - with some shadows. Most important is that your subject has some amount of highly reflective area. In the photo above, this is the white shirt and the keyboard. Set your camera to use second-curtain flash mode, then, finally, shoot your photo. As soon as you see the flash go off, move your camera.

This might feel aberrant at first, but remember the shadows and mid-tones are already sharply frozen before you move the camera. Your exposure time will be quite short - about a quarter second is recommended - and only ambient light reflecting off the brightest parts of your scene will leave traces on the exposure. The ghost patterns can be pretty abstract by themselves, but the softness juxtaposed against the sharply detailed rest of the photo makes an unusual effect.