A lighter shade of pale

This is based on a tip I really liked from the HP on-line course I participated in recently.

TIP
Think creatively! Don’t hesitate. Try it. Some of the best photographs ever taken were creative accidents.
…… Marc Mantha (he also moderates a neat photo sharing forum)



This flower is definitely not a perfect photo, and nothing like how it was supposed to turn out, but I do think it has a wonderful alarming and surreal quality. It has not been post processed (other than resizing smaller) or enhanced in any way. I was experimenting with trying to capture the pure white of the flower in contrast with the rich colour of the dusk skyline. Leaving the exposure to the cameras light meter just left me with a dark grey silhouette of the bloom, so I decided to try the slow flash setting, to infill the flower with light.

The slow, or Slow Synchronization flash to be more precise, on my camera allows both a slow shutter speed for correctly exposing a low light background and an infill flash for the subject. Normally in this setting the flash fires at the end, just before the shutter closes. In other cameras this is sometimes called the rear curtain flash setting. You can also set it to fire at the start, as the shutter just opens, which is referred to as a first curtain flash.

Trouble was the wind blew, and I must have also moved a little, as the dusk skyline was being exposed, so the flower had changed position when the flash fired. I’ll just appreciate the beauty of this unique image as it is. I think this effect will be difficult to reproduce again.