Dragging the shutter, with a little flash

I always wonder if it's possible that I learned photography and then forgot a lot of it. A feeling of not knowing anything at all. Recently, I found myself enjoying some nice down time over the very addicting, Guitar Hero. Watching someone else play is entertaining, especially since I'm not at a level that should be granted an audience. Doing so recently though, I started to think that perhaps there was a photograph somewhere in all of that. But, had I forgotten a lot of the basics of photography...would I be able to make a photograph?

Certainly my skills as a guitar hero enthusiast are by no means at the level that warrants a photograph to be made. I was lucky when I got the inspiration though. I was fortunate enough to have a beautiful model willing to sit around and play the game while I fumbled with the camera long enough to make a few exposures.

I've always been intrigued by the ability of the camera to not only freeze action, an eternal moment preserved, but to capture and convey movement as well. For the life of me though, I'd forgotten how. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention in photo class(to any potential clients-No knowledge from my education has been 'forgotten' but actually condensed into a part of my brain such that my creativity has ample room to think up weird and interesting photo ideas while still being able to reference the techniques needed, with a little...thought).

So here we are, a video game being played with a mock version of an actual guitar. And there are fingers moving at a frantic pace. I could freeze the action with my camera, but what good would that do? My model could've easily posed in any such position. Boring.

Then I saw my little hot-shoe flash unit and a pair of lonely pocket wizards. Yes, a little flash to freeze the action with no need to be forced into putting the flash on the camera...Oh the possibilities...

I threw a homemade gridspot onto the flash to keep most of the light focused on the hands and fingers and not anywhere else really. Popped the flash a few times, got some quick exposures but I needed more. I had to act fast too; My model was going through the songs on expert at such a pace that she'd be finished with the game by the time I got everything to fall into place.

And then it hit me. Drag the shutter. A longer shutter speed. Yes!

So I adjusted the shutter accordingly. I got some motion blur, and the ambient burned into the rest of the frame nicely.

I got a few more shots. Came up with the one below

All in all, a nice short photo shoot that got my brain working on this technique that I'd like to use more often. In the shots above, I was using a zoom lens, so before packing it up and taking the guitar from the model to show her what I could really do, I tried another technique that I rarely use(probably because I don't give it the practice time it may deserve) . It's a zoom technique that as soon as I did it, I realized that it might come in handy


...But more on that later.