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The Reason Why

R0010811 (Large)

Today's photo may be puzzling to the tyros: how did the photographer do it?

Flash photography is a genre of photography in its own right.  For one thing, the flash now serves as the primary light source and the control of the amount of light reaching the sensor hinges on the aperture alone.  The shutter speed becomes irrelevant, well,  in a way, to the exposure.

This is why flash photography affords you the chance to do intriguing photos like this.

Here the room was lit by environmental light peering through the window.  I spot-metered the backyard outside the window, thus making the room seriously underexposed save for when the flash beamed light in a split of a second.  The shutter was dragged by way of lowering the ISO - since the camera used was CX1 which didn't allow tweaking of the exposure combo - thereby allowing me enough time to turn the camera from a horizontal to a vertical position.

Since the backyard was exposed correctly throughout the span of 1/32s, the sensor recorded the twisting movement for that "correctly" exposed area.  The bedroom was intact because its image reached the sensor only at the firing of the flash, except for the the area below the windowsill where the lighting condition was closer to that of the backyard.

Voila!

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