Fire Fans

[RustBeltRaw]

I spent a few hours with the Detroit Fire Collective on Monday. Definitely provided an interesting photographic environment. Long-exposure work with fire dancers is nothing new, but I spent a lot of time trying to properly expose the fire and the dancer in the same shot.

With a 20mm prime lens, my 60D at ISO100 and f/9.0 for 0.6sec, and a 580EX II set to 2nd-curtain firing, E-TTL at +4/3 stops exposure compensation with a full-cut CTO gel, and manual white balance, it was just a matter of waiting for the right moment. The fun part was predicting what pose an improvising dancer would be in 0.6sec from the moment I hit the shutter. So there was definitely luck involved.

Post-processing consisted of increasing saturation and contrast, increasing exposure 0.3 stops, raising the black clipping point, and cloning out a small hole in Jenna's shirt.

Keen to hear what everyone thinks of the results, including suggestions for improvements.

[Shadowman]

Lucky you, getting to use flash.

[Manfred M]

Nice shot! If anyone wonders why cameras have rear curtain (Nikon) / second curtain (Canon) settings, this shot is a provides a great lesson in why to use that feature.

[RustBeltRaw]

As far as I'm concerned, second-curtain flash is essentially mandatory when using on-camera flash. What drives me nuts is that remotes can't be set to second-curtain triggering with Canon's IR system.