Hi everyone. I am an amauter photographer and lately I’ve been requested to photograph some local concerts at my city. The image linked above is one of my many inspirations, and I am very curious about this light trail technique. Is it done right at the time, is it edited later? How? If someone could help me, I’d be very thankful. :)
It’s a combination of very wide-angle lens (therefore deep Depth-of-field), slow shutter, off-camera flash. Also probably high ISO. Focus was most probably set manually with high f/stop. The post with the original image talks about using a fish-eye lens. Definitely not amateur equipment (or skill).
Your problem in photographing in dark venues is knowing how to set your focus, because the camera’s autofocus won’t have enough light to work correctly. Then you’ll need to know how to set the flash power so that it’s bright enough to give sufficient light without blowing out the foreground, and that will likely require off-camera flash at a sufficient distance to evenly light the sunject of interest.
Your camera’s pop-up flash won’t have enough power or distance to do this. Plus this image was not taken with a “normal” lens.