Turning Your Wedding Imagery Into Art | The Dramatic First Dance
Through out the wedding day there are certain milestones that must be documented without fail, without deviance, without a doubt. These are the shots that you must perfect, nail down, secure, capture, whatever it takes just get them and everything else is icing on your wedding cake. Why are they so important? Because as a wedding photographer you are there to tell the story of the wedding day. If you miss these images you not only leave your clients story incomplete, but also you can bet your going to have an upset bride, or worse yet an upset MOB. You pick your poison, but I’d rather walk around the mountain if it means avoiding the bite of the Black Mamba.
What does this have to due with turning your wedding imagery into art you ask? Well when you know that you have certain images that you take at every wedding shouldn’t you have developed a certain style? Shouldn’t you have a particular set up? And if you do have a set up you use each and every time, are you happy with it? Could it use some refining? The truth is if your not pushing yourself how will you improve or perfect? We’ve all heard the old saying that, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Really all this is just a cop out to not push yourself to the next level. If this has been your motto, perhaps you could look at it from a different perspective. Maybe something like, “It ain’t broke, but how could I polish it?”
One area of my wedding photography that has evolved over the years is the way I approach the first dance. This isn’t to say that facial expression; eye contact or tears in the eyes are irrelevant, not at all. But wouldn’t it be great to capture those dramatic moments in dramatic lighting? After all, lighting is everything. Don’t believe me try photographing without it. The problem in creating dramatic light for the first dance is often time the venue’s lighting isn’t. Many times the venue’s lighting is quite flat or even worse, fluorescent. But lets just say that you’re shooting in a nice venue with decent lighting, beautiful chandeliers hanging all around as in the photo above. In this case one of the most effective ways I know to create dramatic lighting is to backlight.
Back lighting or lighting your subject from behind can do a few things, some good, some not so good, but when done properly it’s some of the most beautiful lighting I’ve seen. It’s dramatic, it’s colorful, it can create beautiful lens flare or horrible lens flare, and it creates long dramatic shadows across the dance floor and these shadows lead the viewer’s eyes to the subject. Backlighting can be accomplished using one light or several.
Exposure is key when it comes to back lighting. While silhouettes are nice, I like to see some detail in the faces of my bride and groom. To accomplish this you need to balance your strobe with the ambient light, or you can use a second on camera strobe dialed down as fill. But for now lets stick to a one light setup.
Controlling your lighting using one strobe. This is pretty easy, if you’ve done a few weddings you will find that you have particular settings that your always using during the reception or at least within a narrow range of those settings. I’ve found for the most part that I’m shooting at an ISO of around 1200 to 2000 with an aperture of F2.8 to F5.6 for nighttime receptions. My shutter speed will vary from 1/10th sec to 1/60th depending on the available light and the look I’m after. The beauty of this is that once you have your basic settings you will be able to control your fill simply by adjusting your shutter speed, while your strobe will remain constant as long as you don’t adjust your ISO or aperture.
You will hear a lot about modern strobes being TTL, ETTL, or I-TTL. My experience has shown these automated “SMART” settings to be unreliable at best and detrimental to creative lighting. The solution I use is to shoot in manual, always. The perks for this is longer battery life because I’ve set my strobe to either 1/8 or 1/16 power and sometimes even to 1/32. I know with these settings my strobes will last 3 to 4 hours on a single set of rechargeables.
Position is key and slight adjustments to positioning will yield quite different results. You will find yourself constantly moving, twisting, stretching or bobbing to get just the right angle and height for an effective backlit image. In the image above I positioned my strobe directly behind the couple at seven feet high. This meant that I had to squat down slightly to block the light source behind the head of the bride. I wanted the light to be as close too visible as possible without showing. This would ensure the most amount of rim light around hers and the groom’s heads. My ambient light was underexposed about 1 ½ to 2 stops so that I would have detail but not silhouette. What you don’t see is my assistant holding the light, but you don’t need an assistant to pull this off, a light stand placed strategically will suffice, but using an assistant that knows by hand signals where to be is invaluable and if needed they can make adjustments to your power out put without interrupting your work flow.
Remember, backlighting isn’t the only trick in your bag, but for the first dance it sure is a crowd pleaser.
Tech Data: Canon EOS 5D, 17-35 2.8L, Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2, ISO 1250, 1/50 @ f-3.5, Canon 580 EX II off camera set on manual @ 1/16th power.
Next Time: Taking Your Wedding Imagery to the Next Level – “Romantic Portraits”
Houston Wedding and Portrait Photographer - Scott Villalobos www.rsvpstudios.com
Loading ...
Leave a Comment