Flying High Photography

I’m not the only one done with finals now. The lovely Nicole
is also done with finals, and to celebrate, we thought we would put together
one of her favorite pastimes: Tae Kwon Do, with one of mine: making messes.

So, I waited until it got dark, spread out a tarp (lot of
good that did me), and broke out a 25lbs bag of flour. Did you know they’re
only $10 a Fry’s? My mayhem prepared, I took out my camera and my speedlight and got to work.

First, I exposed the scene without the flash and made sure
that everything in the background was pitch black. Then I put Nicole in the
picture and got a few shots of her to make sure that my lighting was correct.
Even though my camera isn’t a crazy-expensive high-speed camera, I can leave a
long exposure and let the flash’s super-short burst of light freeze the motion
in my image. The results were pretty surprising!

Then came the flour. Beforehand, Nicole and I planned a few
of the shots we wanted to get, a couple different kicks, some chops, something
cool with a sword, but a lot of it was just seeing what looked cool with the
flour. I quickly found that the more flour, the better, and had two assistants
throwing flour in the background even as she was kicking more into the air.

The results were awesome. With flour flying everywhere, it
gave a foggy background to obfuscate everything else in the picture, but still
emphasize her motion and precision. Enjoy!