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Ever took a photo with a flash only to find that while your subject is well lit, the background is dark and almost black?

Dragging the shutter is a photography technique that uses both the flash and available light at the same time. The flash can capture the foreground subject and freeze its action but instead of closing the shutter immediately, the shutter is left open as long as possible to let available light in.

In the example, I used different shutter speeds to capture the background lights. The model, by the way, is Rei Ayanami (Fraulein Revoltech #008) from Neon Genesis Evangelion (Anime). At 1/60sec., (left side) only the subject was captured and the background is almost black. At 1sec., (middle) the background lights are captured, but obviously this is prone to motion blur and I had to braced myself to get a steady shot. At this point, if you can not get a steady shot, then why not deliberately create motion blur? (right side) By panning from left to right and positioning the subject such that the subject is not lighted from the front (except for the light from the flash) and the right side of the subject has no background lights, the flash was able “freeze” the subject and panning was able to blur the background lights. Due to the positioning of the subject with regards to lights as mentioned before, no light trails will overlap with the subject.

In practice, it is hard to get it in one try, you will need several attempts to get the right photo. Practice makes perfect.