Photo Catches Photographer’s Flash Lighting a Portrait

Photographer Simon King was at a music event last year when he unintentionally snapped a photo at exactly the same time as the photographer in his shot. His photo managed to catch her flash lighting up the model she was photographing.

King had been roaming about at the “AfroPunk Festival” in London.

“It was one of those shots which I thought was neat at the time but would never have ended up in my portfolio, as it isn’t as considered as the majority of my well composed or truly well-timed street or reportage,” King tells PetaPixel.

Here’s the sequence of photos King captured at the time showing the model getting into position before the photographer fires off the exposure:

You can see the “cone of light” that emerges from the flash.

“The room was dark, so my camera was metering at 1/24ths,” King says. “At some point within that time the other photographer shot her image, and my exposure captured her flash casting a nice triangle of light through the dusty air.

“To me, it is a neat coincidence and not really very much more. I much prefer images that are well timed due to hard work I put into figuring out those times, and not flukes or lucky accidents.”

King, a photojournalist and street photographer, shares his work on Instagram and also teaches a street photography short course at UAL.

Image credits: Photographs by Simon King and used with permission