Self-portrait dropping into Neihu District. There's about a 15 minute window where the light is right to get this shot, on the 4th night I nailed it just before a thunderstorm rolled in and it rained for a week straight. *Despite the appearance all the lights are actually mounted backwards under the seat and behind my helmet to leave a trail while riding away from the camera. 20 second exposure on a 10 second delay, flash remotely fired from my handlebar.
Normally you can use a flash to freeze the action in a certain point. which i blieve he wouold have done here, but i dont know if you can do it for such a long exposure
His back is see through as it is a long exposure shot, as he has since moved since the opening of the shutter, the camera also had time to capture some of the background of what was behind him for the rest of the shot after he triggered the flash.
With it being so dark a single flash can easy freeze motion on an exposure this long. My back is transparent because the flash is hidden in the rocks below and in front of me on a slight angle, thus no light ever hits my back or the very top of my head. A second flash behind might fix this but it would likely be visible in the shot and possibly light up too much of the surroundings, both of which I very much wanted to avoid. Though not completely intentional, I rather like the 'ghost' look to it and in fact once I figured out how to set everything up over the first few nights, the biggest challenge was getting a shot with just the right balance sharp rider and transparency (I have quite a few headless looking outtakes). Again, this probably would have been easier if this wasn't a self-portrait and I didn't have to fire the flash from my handlebar while bouncing over the rocks.