The Enthusiast's Guide to Night and Low-Light Photography

34. DRAGGING THE SHUTTER

DRAGGING THE SHUTTER is a technique whereby you use a slower shutter speed to allow the ambient light from a scene to illuminate the background, and then use a flash to add some fill light on the subject. The idea is to balance the ambient light with the fill light so you can maintain the atmosphere and mood of the background and surrounding areas.

This technique is not very difficult if you have a basic understanding of what is going on in the image and how much of the ambient light you want in the image. As you can see in Figure 34.1, the lights from the background are allowed to bleed into the frame, while the subject ...