LIGHT UP THE NIGHT - WITH LUCI FISH

It may be dark outside but you still want to look good and keep warm in the process. I teamed up with model Luci again to create some fantastic night time fashion inspiration. Warm fur coats and hats mixed with autumninal colours create a great fashion style for this time of year. Taking a short break in shooting we grabbed a cup of tea in the Lowry Theatre and waited for the light to fade so we could begin our night time shoot.

Night time photography is a tricky thing. The low level light is a problem for capturing images properly without blurring or you need an awful lot of external light sources to provide adiquate light. Flash guns are great to lighting up a situation but often leave the scene blown out and as an unflattering light source. This is where Front and Rear Curtain Sync flash come in.

Rear Curtain Sync makes your camera fire the flash at the end of the exposure. So when you press the shutter the lens open and starts collecting light and just before it closes the flash will fire to light up and freeze your main subject. Conversely Front Curtain Sync makes your camera fire the flash at the start of the exposure. For example when you press the shutter, the flash will fire immediately and the shutter will remain open afterwards capturing ambient light. Both of these methods are used in night club and action sports where the light levels are particularly low. We experimented with both of these settings and eventually having to stop due to a down pour of rain. The idea was to get the flash to highlight Luci and the ambient light of the traffic passing and city scape to create light streaks behind her.