Jinx new update and some technical photography read!

Hello my Sweethearts!

How are you doing? How are you feeling?
Today is the first day of May. And also today is the International Workers’ day. Technically it’s a holiday for all of us, who work hard and earn their money in an honest way.
In many countries it’s an official day off, so if you are among the lucky, I hope you are having a great time. If not, I hope your work day was so easy it almost felt like nothing. )
As for me, I was working today the whole day, because our team was asked to postpone the holiday to any other day in the year. Technically, I have a few days extra vacation days, which is still big plus. )
I congratulate all of us on this day, and want to say to each of you personally, that you are awesome. What you do is great and important. And there’s no professional like you in your field. Let’s wish us all big salaries or profits. )

Today I’m also here to share another progress image from the Jinx project.
I can’t say anything aside from the thought that our Jinx looks awesome in my opinion. And very very desirable, respectfully. )
Fun fact:
We planned to have a weapon prop for this photoshoot. But the craftlord failed to deliver the final product. Very unfortunate, because it takes a lot of funds and time for construction of the piece.I wish we could have shots of Jinx riding the BIG gun.Eh…
In my last post I slightly touched the subject of long exposure. I had a thought about why not talk about it more in this post. And because today I can’t remember any on set story. _

I love and hate working with long exposure. When you set your camera to long exposure, it means you’re opening the shutter for a longer period of time, which also leads to more light information captured by your film or digital matrix. For example, the night sky is shot that way. Or that famous road images with moving lights.
But long exposure also means your camera should be fixed or stable. Because it capture every little movement.
But what if you need your model to be lit mostly by ambient light and both you and model a bit shaky?
In order to fixate your subject in one place, in our case, you can use flash light. Flash basically freezes everything before the camera shutter closes.
In a more technical way the right term might be “Front/rear curtain synch flash”.
As you know or might know, the difference lies in speed of the curtains in your camera. Curtain consists of two parts, which are called front and rear curtains.
In a usual situation the curtain in your camera drops down allowing the light to hit your film or matrix if you have a digital camera. First falls front curtain, second rear.
With the in-built or external synchronizer you can adjust the timing of your flashlight to the camera shutter speed. To be precise, you can adjust your flash to a certain curtain.
By tuning the flash light and your synchronizer you can achieve different effects.
For example, your flash can be activated right before the first curtain falls. In the instant the first curtain falls, the object that was flashed will appear frozen at place, and when the second curtain drops you’ll get this object lit by the ambient light. Basically, if the object is moving, you’ll have some kind of reverse effect. If you shoot moving car that way, it’ll appear like it was moving backwards, the object leaves after images but backwards ) This “technique”is called Front curtain sync flash.

If you activate your flash right before the second curtain falls, the object before that moment will be lit with ambient light and after flash activates it’ll be frozen at place. If the object was moving it’ll create the “fast moving forward” effect. Oh, like superhero Flash running effect, the object will leave an afterimage behind it while moving forward. This “technique”is called Rear curtain sync flash.

It’s a very interesting instrument to use, but very situational. But it’s also a powerful narrative instrument.
In Dzikan photography case we use it very rarely. Mainly when we work with long exposure situations. And very often we use rare curtain sync flash. I would like to say that we use it because we have a big idea of the character always “moving” forward, being strong and confident. The answer is Yes and No at the same time. It’s our personal preference and easier to comprehend on set. And also when we really want to have a narrative in our shot we use one of the two techniques. )

I hope this read wasn’t too chaotic and confusing. I found myself in a situation, when I couldn’t come up with proper explanation. It feels like today I forgot how to speak both russian and english. Too much work and I guess I’m just tired. )

After writing everything, I think it was more about flash sync rather than long exposure. Maybe because there’s not much you can say about it. Oopsies! )

Please share your thoughts on the Jinx update! I’m trying to move from the grim dark emotions I was emanating from my previous posts, so I hope I did good providing the positivity in this post. )
Have a great day! And please, be healthy and happy!