The following self-portrait is completely unedited

an image with multiple semi-transparent figures walking in a single exposure

okay, I did edit the brightness a little bit and a few other minor things just to make it a little more pleasing to look at. The exposure hasn't fundamentally been changed at all though. You may already know what's going on here if you have some photography knowledge.

Recently, I decided that I wanted a nice flash and tripod for my camera. I went to a camera store and a very nice salesman showed me my options. He even demonstrated how I can use a flash to create bounce light off a nearby surface for nicer lighting in portraits.

When I got home I excitedly opened the flash and tripod and started setting it all up. As I set up and read through the manual for my flash, I realized that my new flash was also able to operate as a strobe light. I pieced together that I may be able to use the strobe light in a dark environment to make a double exposure like effect. So naturally, instead of experimenting with the techniques the nice salesmen demonstrated, I've been fiddling with taking unusual photos with the strobe light feature instead.

In case you haven't pieced together how this works yet, I'll describe the setup process for taking a photo like this:

Set up your camera on a steady tripod, in a dark environment, with no nearby wall
Set your shutter speed to 5 seconds or more
Set your flash to flash multiple times within a 5 second period
Take the shot, and move something near the camera while the shutter is open

While the camera shutter is open, the "film" in the camera (in this case, digital film) is being exposed to light. Because the environment is very dark, the camera needs some extra light from a flash in order to collect enough light to make an image. Instead of doing 1 very powerful flash to light the scene, I've decided to do 5 less powerful flashes while walking across the frame. As a result, each time the camera flashes I appear a different place in the image while also being naturally blended into the background.

an image with multiple semi-transparent figures running in a single exposure

Me and my partner running towards the camera

I think this photo serves as an interesting demonstration of how distance plays into the effect. As you can see, the flashes where we were further away from the camera we appear dimmer, and closer, brighter.

Why have the flash on the camera?

A bright floating upper portion of myself on a dark background

Me holding the flash in my hand, pointed at myself

In my opinion, you can make even cooler effects by holding the light source yourself! Here I manually triggered the flash in my hand, then quickly ran out of frame while the shutter was still open. I set the flash to be bright enough so that I didn't appear semi-transparent and blended with the background too.

An image with multiple semi-transparent figures with only an upper body and head

The council of Themis would like a word with you

Here's another where I flashed myself multiple times from different positions during a single 15 second exposure

I've had a lot of fun so far experimenting with my new flash. I hope you enjoyed :)