Lighting.
It's scary, intimidating, amazing and can make or break a photo.
I REALLY believe that my career took a drastic turn for the better when I came out of my hiding spot, and faced the fear of light head on. There are a lot of fantastic resources out there, and I read books, watched videos and purchased classes on-line to learn as much as I could.
Zach and Jody Gray are absolutely fantastic. Here is a video explaining their choices of lighting and some technique. I'm sure there are a ton more out there, I specifically purchased their class on Creative Live that covered weddings, and it CHANGED MY GAME! So worth it.
I feel like I have a million more miles to travel before I'm completely satisfied with the technique, but I can tell you that I'm confident I can handle nearly any situation come wedding/reception day.
I started off with my speedlights and umbrellas. But like any photographer I WANTED more. :) So I purchased a Flashpoint with a 24x32 soft box. This set up requires a vagabond mini battery pack, and all together, it's quite heavy, so an assistant is extremely helpful.
During the first dance, I use the flashpoint, with a beauty dish (not sure the dims) and then a speedlight on a light stand (with no modifier). Not sure of my settings, I usually just wing it! I think that my flashpoint was at 3/4 power and my speedlight (canon 580exii) was at 1/4 power. My camera is on manual at iso 320, 1/125th and f5.6. Depending on the reception, my shutter speed will go up or down. If there are a lot of really cool lights in the background, I'll drop my shutter speed down a bit to get them in there too. Here are three photos from Friday. Can you tell which one I took without the lights? And WHY it's so important to learn to use lighting to your advantage?? :)
(these photos have minimal editing in lightroom, otherwise they're straight out of camera)
Happy Shooting!
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