So you are shooting a party in a dance hall with very minimal lighting and a lot of people moving around. Armed with your flash, you start shooting people but your goal was to let the photos tell the story. You don’t want stills with people’s smiles frozen by the flash of light. It just doesn’t tell the story.
I have browsed a lot good wedding photojournalists’ websites and most of them capture dancing using the technique of radial blur. It freezes your subject but everything else is obviously in motion when the shot was taken. Plus the radial lines created by the lights around gives more focus to your subject. So we tried it ourselves in one of the weddings we shot this January.
So how did we do it?
This photo was taken with an ISO of 1600, f 5.0, and shutter speed of 1/6 sec. The flash setting was set to 1/16. Your shutter speed should not be too fast otherwise you will not get the blur when you rotate the camera as you shoot. It shouldn’t be too slow either because your dancing couple would also be in a blur. Ask them to smile for you for sec and press the shutter while slightly rotating the camera. Make sure there is pivotal point which should be the center so your subject will be clear and not be part of the blur. Hope this explanation helps.
If you have questions, email us – melon@melrish.com or arish@melrish.com. Also, we are conducting a poll if people will be interested in attending a class in basic photography (wedding photojournalist style) and street photography, shoot us a mail or comment on our Facebook page.
