Monday, March 17, 2014

GPP Dubai - Day 8

Day 8 of Gulf Photo Plus was a demonstration day in the Joe McNally workshop. Rather than going out and shooting, we stayed in the auditorium (call it the studio) and watched as Joe worked with a couple of dancers and set up some rather advanced flash setups for us to see.

The topic was multiple exposures, long exposures, light painting, and stroboscopic flash! The sort of stuff that only Joe McNally can really pull off. The setup and execution of these shots are the sort of thing that you just need to do a whole bunch of them until you get one that looks right.

Since this was a demo day, I don't have any images to show. Joe did all the shooting, and I was so into it, I didn't even take any behind-the-scenes shots. Well, we spent most of the day in darkness anyway since we were working with long exposures so even behind the scenes would not have turned out well anyway.

Most of the shots followed the same pattern. A starting point, a dance sequence from starting to ending point, then another shot to mark the end. With the light painting, Joe gave the model LED bicycle lights to wear on her hands. The first exposure was at the start position with flash, then a second exposure which was long while the model danced from start to finish, then a third exposure with flash to finish it off. The result is two images of the dancer on either end of the frame with swirls of light and color in between.

The stroboscopic was a little more complicated, but he was able to pull it off. It was basically the same recipe, but the second exposure had the flash in strobe mode making several "ghost" dancers in between the start and end positions. I can't wait to try these techniques at home!!

Day 9 is the last day of GPP and we are heading to a bicycle racing track. Should be an exciting last day!

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