Flashing bikes

QI used flash to shoot my friend on his mountain bike. While it lit him OK, the shot was static and the surroundings were dark. What could I have done to improve the image? Tim Bushman

ATo give it a different creative edge and capture that sense of speed, I reckon a spot of slow‑sync flash coupled with panning would give you the result you are looking for. When you use slow-sync flash, the shutter stays open for much longer than when using flash conventionally. This means more ambient light is captured, so the surroundings won’t darken as much.

The longer exposure also means that if you ‘pan’ – move the camera with the bike as it speeds past your position – and take your image simultaneously, the burst of flash will freeze the subject, but the longer exposure and camera movement will create streaking. It’s a standard technique for professional sports photographers.

With slow-sync flash, you can set the flash for rear- or front-curtain sync. For action, you often want rear-curtain so you get the movement blur behind the subject, but either option will give you an interesting look. You’ll need to experiment a bit with shutter speeds – the shot below was taken at 1/30 sec, but it’ll also work with even slower shutter speeds.