Spinning Lights and Slow Sync Flash – A Festive Portrait Trick
If you’re looking for something festive at this time of year, here’s a lovely idea to try. Take a string of fairy lights, suspend them from the ceiling, and put somebody beautiful in amongst them. Get them to spin the lights around their head, set your camera to around eight to ten seconds at f/22, turn off your studio lights, and fire the flash in the dark. It’s a beautifully simple approach – and it pairs wonderfully with a clamshell lighting setup if you want to add a little more shape and polish to your portraits.
Shot One: Inside the Lights
The effect of this first approach is wonderful. Because the lights are spinning around your model, it looks as though she’s standing inside them. The long exposure captures all that movement while the flash freezes her perfectly within it. Just hope the lights don’t catch her on the way round.
After
Before
Shot Two: In Front of the Lights
For the second variation, move your model forward so she’s standing in front of the swinging lights rather than amongst them. Turn off the studio lights and shoot exactly the same way. Because of where she’s standing, her body blocks out the lights swinging around behind her, and you get a beautiful, quite different effect. If you’re already familiar with how to use clamshell lighting for portraits, you’ll recognise that same principle of controlling what falls on your subject versus what falls behind them.
After
Before
Shot Three: The Ghostly Variation
The third approach builds on the second. Set everything up the same way, but this time, the moment the flash fires, have your model step quickly out of frame. What you’re left with is something slightly ghostly – it looks almost as though she was never there at all.
After
Before
Three variations, one simple setup. A string of fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, a long exposure, and a touch of flash to light the model. Whether you’re experimenting with a full clamshell lighting setup or just playing with a single flash in a darkened studio, the principle is the same – keep it simple, stay curious, and see what happens. Christmas is coming.