Once the vows have been said, the speeches made, the toasts… uh, toasted… we get to capture some truly candid Wedding moments — like when the Best Man belts out a Dylan tune, or the bride starts a rowdy conga line.
Technique
The technique we’re using here is called Second-Curtain Sync or, alternatively, Slow-Sync Flash. It’s handy for shooting moving objects in dark or poorly-lit areas.
Complete technical details will follow on a later post, but the process requires setting your camera’s shutter to “bulb.” When pressed, the flash fires, effefctively “freezing” the action, then we continue to hold the shutter down, exposing the background details. Finally we release the shutter, which fires a second burst from the flash that helps to create additional ghosted figures.
Exposure time varies from one to four seconds, allowing us to twist, turn and pull the camera, when holding down the shutter, to enhance the effect of the background lighting. We can create our own swirls of light that really help to capture the raucous mood of the reception party.
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I can’t wait for the Boardman-Mech wedding you guys are going to an AWESOME job!
Thanks — we’re super excited! We’ve been looking forward to Boardman-Mech wedding all season.