Tourists on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, China. 2006
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Introduction
Welcome to the blog of Sean Gallagher, a British photojournalist, videographer and multimedia producer based in Beijing, China.
Sean specializes in covering environmental issues in Asia, with specific emphasis on China. This blog is a photo-diary, updated with posts about Sean's life as a professional photojournalist.
Sean's work has featured in news outlets including Newsweek, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. He is also a contributing photographer to the National Geographic Image Collection.
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Hi Sean. Great image! I’ve always wondered how to do this type of shot. Is it rear curtain flash? Or slow flash? Or a combination of the two?
Hi Chris,
If I remember rightly, I was using the on-camera flash which I normally like to use in these situations. My shutter speed would of been set quite low, may 1/4 second or even 1/2 second. Using the flash with the slow shutter freezes the action in the foreground, blurs the background and most importantly (in my opinion) sucks up a lot of ambient light to make the shot look more natural. Is that clear?
Sean
Hi Sean,
It’s great of you to take the risk on shooting a picture on this day in Tian’anmen. I actually live in Beijing now and this shot…reminds me of alomst everthing, the country we love and the price it cost to simply love it…Thank you Sean, thank you very much, for the rememberance of the things past but never really died.