1) SET-UP
Shooting in a lit area next to a main road meant that exposures had to be carefully timed to avoid capturing trails from car headlights that would cause overexposing the background with uneven light.
3) CAMERA SETTINGS
When shooting slow-sync portraits at night you need an incredibly low flash output. Shoot wide open, ideally wider than f/5.6, to allow as much light through the lens as possible.
4) ONLY FLASH
By increasing the shutter speed by five stops to 1/30sec and maintaining the same flash power, the result is a massively underexposed background with virtually no visible detail.
5) FLASH WITH AMBIENT LIGHT
The combination of low-powered flash, which ‘freezes’ any subject movement from the model, and the one-second shutter speed has created a well-balanced exposure where the flash and ambient light have blended together.