Double-Header???

[Arthur Morris]

On DAY-2 of the recently concluded SW FLA IPT we arrived quite early at the Venice Rookery only to find that there were no birds roosting there and thus, no early morning fly-out. There was one single and available Great Blue Heron displaying almost constantly from a rather clean perch with a distant background. It was dark. I remember saying to the group, "It's digital, you can experiment freely" as I was creating some four to six second exposures of the bird as it sky-pointed and bowed in hopes of attracting a female. I popped the flash at the beginning of the exposure and was confused to see two sharp images rather than one... At lunch, when I saw the image on my laptop, I realized that during the long exposure someone else had fired their flash towards the end of my exposure (at a slightly lower setting than my flash had been on). How fortuitous.

Canon 500mm f/4 L IS lens with the EOS 1D Mark III. Evaluative metering +1 1/3 stops: 6 seconds at f/4. Flash at -1 stop with Better Beamer.

All comments welcome. Later and love, artie

ps: Two days later I tried to achieve the same effect using the multi-flash firing but need to study the flash owner's manual as I quickly became confused by the three settings that need to be adjusted...

[Alfred Forns]

Hope you can figure out the flash settings Artie Love the effect Over the top feel and love the richness !!!!

[Jasper Doest]

Now that is an interesting image!!!! Not sure if the vertical approach works well here...but I like this a lot. The sense of movement makes this one for me.

[Arthur Morris]

Now that is an interesting image!!!! Not sure if the vertical approach works well here...but I like this a lot. The sense of movement makes this one for me.

Jasper, remember, I had no idea that the second flash would fire, thus not as much room in front of the bird as I would have liked.

later and love, artie

[Fabs Forns]

Moved from Birds.

It is definitely "Outside the Box" material.

We would like to encourage all of you to try new things and if you like the results post them here. It will be a great learning experience and inspirational tool to all.

Thanks, Maestro. Definitely worth trying to duplicate, although works of art are hard to replicate ;)

[Robert Amoruso]

Pretty cool effect even if unintended. Definitely OoTB.

[James Shadle]

Artie,
Sweet image. Nice the GBH kept it's body relatively still during the exposure.
During a 4 second exposure, with the flash on auto or manual (I would prefer manual in this case) you would have time to press the test fire button several times. I would recommend taking the flash off the bracket and fire it while holding it. This to avoid camera movement caused by pressing the test fire button on the flash.

[Maxis Gamez]

Very interesting for sure! I remember when you were trying the multi flash exposure!

[DanWalters]

Love the effect and the sense of motion.

[Jim Poor]

That is so neat. I've often wondered how often flashes affect another person's exposure in group settings.