The Protestor

The Protestor

photo ©Gary Walts 1996

The Protestor... Newt Gettingrich, uh..er.., I mean, Newt Gingrich came to Syracuse New York to visit local politicians and big wigs, including Syracuse area Representative James Walsh. Naturally a mob of folks that don't like these guys or their policies turned out en masse to make a statement. It was a rather colorful event with all manner of costumed characters as well as normal 9 to 5 working folks. I wanted a photo that had some impact, to drive home the mood of these protestors. I was busy shooting along, looking for something different when it hit me: I'll use a slower shutter speed and zoom at the subject during the exposure with the flash turned on. The reason for using the flash was to freeze the subject during a portion of the exposure while the zooming of the lens streaked the the subject as the camera recorded the ambient light. This is sort of like a double exposure. The normal exposure as well as the exposure made by the flash.

At any rate, I tried about ten frames of this man with his sign and this one was the best. Some were complete bombs. There is a certain ammount of luck in a situation like this so you need to make a lot of exposures to make sure you get a good one. In this shot there is nice blurring action created by the zoom, the flash froze the subject nicely at a moment when his expression added to the overall mood of the shot. I used a Minolta 5400xi flash mounted on the hot shoe of a 9xi camera. Lens was 35-80mm f4-5.6 zoom. Film was 400 speed Fujicolor negative. I recall that the shutter speed was 1/45th sec. I remember this clearly because I was wondering if I could get enough zooming motion at this shutter speed. Turns out there was plenty. I first metered the scene with the flash off and then set the camera manually, using the settings provided by the camera's meter. I turned on the flash and shot away.

GO BACK

---

...NEXT PAGE