Blurring the Lines - Twisting with the X-T1

Dance is one of the most brilliant and yet most difficult things to photograph well.  It involves split second timing, precise technique and a deep understanding of your subject.

So sometimes it is much better to throw away all the rules and try something completely new...!


That is exactly what I did last month when I photographed dancers from Jive Nation at the Marylebone Summer Fayre in London.  Right from the start I knew that I wasn't going to be satisfied with conventional "sharp" images - there were too many dancers in too small a space so it was impossible to isolate a subject.

Instead I used a slow shutter speed technique of dragging the shutter by twisting the camera about the lens axis during the exposure.  I first saw this demonstrated by Zack Arias at a GPP workshop last year and have been waiting for a good subject to try it out.

Now it has to be said that this is a hit and miss affair - mainly miss actually - and takes an awful lot of practice.  These shots were all taken at between 1/15th and 1/30th second at f/16 with the X-T1 and the Fujinon 27mm f:2.8 pancake lens.  They are the handful of keepers from several hundred frames - glad I'm not using film...

Several things happen when you use this technique.  Firstly the slow shutter speed and fast dance action give you motion blur to start with.  The twist of the camera then increases this blur towards the edge of the frame.  If you can combine the twist with a circular motion or shape from the dancers then you can get them "sharpish" and convey a fantastic sense of movement with great subject isolation.

Timing is everything with this technique - you want your subject to be more or less upright in the frame so you have to fire the shutter just as you pass through the horizontal (or vertical) moment in the twist - not so easy!

The problem then is actually keeping your subject in the frame and not cutting off arms, legs or worse still heads...

In keeping with the vintage feel of Jive, I have given these images a vintage twist with a toned sepia monochrome process in Lightroom and a little negative vignetting to lighten the edges - it has something of the faded postcard look about it perhaps...

Using the X-T1 for this technique is a joy.  You get to see how it is working right away in the viewfinder without having to take the camera down from your eye.  Just a 1.5 second preview is all you need to see if the twist is too much or too little for the action in front of you so you can adjust the speed of twist to get the desired effect.  And of course keeping the camera to your eye means you don't see the other photographers there looking at you as if you are completely mad as you twist and turn for every image...

Thanks to Stuart, Alexandra, Fanny and Tony for being such fabulous dancers and such great subjects to photograph.