Story behind the photo: The night I fell in love

• Published July 4th, 2011 by Ron Ragan
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The photo below is interesting on several levels. 

The image is a time exposure (the red swirls are caused by the glowing end of a burning stick).  The girl (my wife Lynda when she was just a wee-young thing in college) was exposed (photographed) on the same frame of film as the glowing stick (double exposure), only she was lighted with a single electronic flash firing from the camera.

She was actually moving her arms around during the exposure (but you could not see that because she was totally in the dark and only the glowing sick was "visible" to the camera).  When the flash fired, it stopped all the action.  A flash "stops"the action because it goes on and off at about 1/10,000 of a second (give or take a few thousands of a second).  If it is dark enough, and your shutter stays open long enough, you can actually have multiple firings of your flash and get multiple images.

The camera I used was a 35mm Nikormat (which I still own) on a tripod, and as I remember the details (circa1969), I opened the camera shutter using the "B" (bulb) setting and did both exposures one right after the other.  I believe I manually flashed the strobe using the test button.  Regardless how I did it, the principal is still the same.

When I get time I want to do a future blog on "painting with light."  In this technique, you open your shutter (using the "B" setting or the camera's  timer set to several seconds or even several minutes if it is dark enough) and while it stays open, you walk around your subject (in the total darkness) and "paint" with a flashlight. It works best on stationary objects like rocks or buildings.  Painting with light can create stunning photographs.

Oh yeah, back to my photograph; so what's all this "love" stuff in my blog title? Turns out this was the very night, while at a college fraternity party, I realized probably for the first time, that I REALLY had fallen for this lovely girl name Lynda.  Shortly after that I asked her to marry me. Forty one years later, here we are . . . two love birds.  And, there you have it — the night I fell in love (and coincidentally) the night I learned how to do a "double-exposure."