First, welcome to my new site!

I thought I’d start off by explaining the thought behind the name of my event and performance photography business. I chose “Drag the Shutter” because it is a tried and true photographic technique used to convey action in an image. After all, events are full of, if nothing else, action, right? Whether it’s a couple dancing, children laughing and playing, a crowd reacting, or a performer making magic, telling the story of an event often involves telling a story of action. Of course, not every image is going to have “shutter drag” in it. That would get old pretty fast, but the right moments call for the proper use of this technique to really tell the story.

Take the image I’m using in this blog post for example. This is a photo of a couple dancing at a cancer benefit. By leaving the shutter open, the background lights have a sweeping blur, while the camera’s flash freezes the couple’s faces in time. So you get to see the joy they’re expressing while at the same time getting a sense of their movement as they dance the night away. If I did not “drag the shutter” in this shot, they would look like a static couple who were only posing to look like they were dancing. By dragging the shutter, you can see that they were full of life, full of joy, and full of action.