How is this effect achieved?

[fly my pretties]

...

[_Sim]

To me it looks like the person used a flash to capture the woman clearly and left the shutter open for a bit while hand-holding the camera to get the light trails.

[fly my pretties]

Thanks, that's exactly what I thought. Would you say the flash was triggered at the start or the end of the exposure?

[poloman]

Hard to tell by this image whether the flash was used in normal or second curtain sync mode. Second curtain sync will place the subject most clearly at the end of linear motion. That is what I use for this kind of shot. Make sure you have a sufficiently slow shutter speed.

[form]

Wouldn't make much difference if there was very little ambient light striking her and it was all blurred by motion. Second curtain sync is good for establishing a trail of where the person was - there's no telling where they started in this shot.

[fly my pretties]

Ok, thanks for the replies guys. I guess curtain sync isn't so important, I can just experiment on the night.

Thanks again.

[Ook]

I guess curtain sync isn't so important, I can just experiment on the night.

Just thought I'd point out that if you're in a dim room, and your shutter speed winds up being close to ~1second, I'd imagine you'd be best off with front-curtain, so you can preserve the foreground element when you know it's working well in terms of pose, facial expression etc., rather than releasing the shutter and waiting a full second for your flash to go off, in which time the camera may have moved around, the subject blinks or does something wierd with their face.

The trails will be the same regardless of front or rear-curtain, so I'd start with front. Just my two bits.

[Radtech1]

Do you not remember how you got it on your first shot? Or was that just a lucky press of the shutter and you want to repeat it? Either way, check the EXIF data on this shot and use that as a starting point - experiment from there.

Rad

[tonylong]

Check this thread:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=415099

Plenty of examples of this and a lot of discussion/sharing. Nightclub photography has its challenges!