Teller Reveals His Secrets for Smithsonian Magazine

When we got the call from Smithsonian Magazine to capture Teller of Penn and Teller we were thrilled and jumped at the chance to capture him preforming a magic trick. The crux of the assignment was to create motion blur while having him lit by several strobes. In order to create the final images we had to do some trickery of our own, we started off by using 3 strobes and one hot light on his hands and captured him at a slow shutter speed. After several frames I decided I wanted to try something different, so we changed things around and ditched the hot light. In the end the final images were all lit with strobes fired at two different times, the first pop of the strobes lit his head and body and the second pop of one strobe lit his hands only a half second after the first ones popped, confused yet? Doing a lighting set-up this way allowed us to keep him in sharp focus while showing movement in his hands. So in the end it seems we used a bit of magic on him as well…. Check out the story HERE.