I was a member of the Plano Photography Club for a few years.  I really enjoyed this group and learned a lot about photography.

Each fall and spring, the club sponsored a model shoot.  To attend, you paid a small fee and gave permission for the models to use the images for their portfolios.  In return, you could use the images for your portfolio.  Great for everyone and really fun, too.

Photographing models is an excellent way to practice when you are learning how to photograph people.  They know what to do in front of the camera and you are free to experiment.  (Plus, they are generally pretty easy on the eyes.)

And it was so helpful when more experienced photographers helped those with less experience.

One thing I learned about was when I was taking pictures of a model in a control room.  This room had a lot of TV monitors.  Don, one of the photographers who was helping me at the time, told me to be sure to "drag my shutter" if I wanted the pictures on the monitors to show up in the photograph.

I had never heard this term before, but I soon found out what it meant.  Dragging the shutter means to slow the shutter speed down.  (If you use manual mode, you get to set the aperture and the shutter speed yourself.  Control freak heaven!)

Normally, I shoot with a shutter speed of about 1/125th of a second.  However, if I want to capture ambient light (say, a fireplace or light in the room) and I am using a studio light, 1/125th of a second won't record the ambient light. 

The shutter speed is just too fast to capture the ambient light and the studio light is so much brighter than the ambient light that, in comparison, the ambient light looks dark.  My subjects may be lit properly because I am using a studio flash, but the background will be dark.

You might wonder why I don't just use the ambient light instead of the studio flash.  The reason is because of motion.  People aren't perfectly still so if you slow down the shutter speed, you will likely get motion blur from people moving (blinking, twitching, etc.).

Ah, but the flash freezes motion.  Therefore, if you freeze the motion on the people but slow the shutter speed down (maybe 1/40th of a second), you will get the ambient light AND the people will be sharp because the flash froze the motion.  I recommend you use a tripod to avoid camera shake, too.

Here's a recent example of dragging the shutter so you can see what I'm talking about.  The background is much brighter than it would have been if I hadn't slowed down the shutter speed. 

Make sense?  Yes, I know it's a bit complicated but it is one of those fun little tricks that can make a big difference.

Thanks so much for reading.

Dawn