About 40 years ago, as a teen ager, I had a part time as a guide in a cave in
central Texas. The owner was having brochures made and I got to help the
photographer do some of the pictures. One of the methods he used was to set
his camera up and then with the lights in the cave out "paint" the areas he
wanted exposed. He was using flash bulbs rather than strobes. Last
Christmas I was taking a time exposed picture of a building in my area and
was exposing long enough to get "trails" of head and tail lights going
through the intersection in front of the building. There was a street sign
in the picture that was part of the composition and I assumed it would get
enough light from the head lights and street lights to work in the picture I
envisioned. When I had the film processed it became apparent that wasn't the
case. A night or two later I went back, set up the same way as before and
during the exposer, took my T32 with 4 folds of clean handkerchief over the
flash and triggered it unconnected to the camera to expose the street sign.
This time, having painted the street sign during my time exposure, it came
out the way I had envisioned it. There are many ways one can use a strobe to
"paint" the subject to produce the results they want. Sometimes it takes a
little "trial and error" to get get it right. Bill Barber
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