Stroboscopic Flash Dance

Stroboscopic Flash Dance

Flash is the perfect tool for freezing motion. Whether it’s speedlights or strobes, we’ve all seen this in practice, but there’s more than one way to freeze a cat. What if we wanted to repeatedly freeze motion, capturing a series of movements all in one exposure? Stroboscopic flash is the ticket. To illustrate this awesome technique, I’m enlisting the help of some brand-new, hot-off-the-presses gear: Elinchrom’s new ELC Pro HD mono heads. These bad boys have a built-in stroboscope feature set, something usually reserved for underpowered speedlights or prohibitively priced high-end power packs.

Finding the right vehicle for this motion study with flash was key. I thought about using boxers, break dancers, MMA fighters and, of course, a classic ballerina. Equally important was finding the right venue. Not only would I need space to capture the motion and agility of my subject, I’d also need room for my lights. Equally important, I’d need a way to kill almost all the ambient light in the shot, as the technique I planned on using called for flash only and a long exposure.