This post is a result of a conversation in another post about wedding reception lighting. I thought it might be useful for others to see how one photographer goes about the process. By all means, my methods are not for everyone, in fact, you may hate my lighting. That's all good. But if you like it, then perhaps you can take something from it.
Let me warn you that my method is not cheap. I use three or four lights at every reception. When I was first starting out, I used cheap speedlights and pocket wizards. The advantage was that they were easy to set up and move about. The disadvantage is that the recycle time is slow, especially towards the end of the evening.
So I started using mono lights. The advantage is that the recycle time is nearly instantaneous. The disadvantage is that they have to be plugged into a circuit and are difficult to move about.
I now use, what I consider to be the best of both, Cheetah lights. They offer the flexibility of speedlights with the power and quick recycle time of mono lights. Plus I can control the power of the lights from the transmitter. However, like I mentioned, these are not cheap. But for the price of a good L lens, you can buy two or three lights and be set.
I'm going to break this discussion into several parts so that I can post more than the allotted number of photos. All of the images are from the last wedding I shot, which took place entirely at a rather large wedding venue. This particular venue lends itself to "bouncing" the light off the walls. At some other venues I may use direct light or a combination of direct and bounced light. One thing to note about this venue is that the walls are painted light brown. This gives any bounced light a slight color tint. I would prefer white or light gray walls, but I can easily color correct the images in LR.
During the day this particular venue is rather bright as one wall is mostly window. Most photographers would take a look at this place and say; "you don't need no stinking light!" And you would be right. However, I view my job as one where I want to make my clients look as good as possible. To me, this means putting light where I want it and not just where it happens to be.
Take a look at the following pics of my second shooter. This is the entrance, where the bridal party will enter the main venue. This was shot with available light
Now compare it to this photo, where I had two lights, one on either side of the entrance, bouncing off the walls. I keep the power of my lights pretty low. My goal is not to "overpower" the ambient in this situation, rather I simply want to supplement the ambient light. In addition, by keeping the power low, the lights don't bother anyone.
Now on to the opposite side of the room where the ceremony was held. Again, the ambient light looks good. The problem is that the B&G won't be facing this direction. They will be have their backs to the camera. Also, the right side of the frame is darker than I like due to the fact that nearly all the ambient light is coming from the windows on the left side of the frame.
So by adding two more lights into the corners, and bouncing them, I get this light. I like the modeling that the light gives me. Note that the right side of the frame is a bit brighter than the left. Even though I had both lights set to the same power output (and the same distance from the subject) the light on the right was bouncing into a mirror, which kills the "softness". I could have simply pointed the light at the subject and achieved the same results. In the next post, I'll put up some photos from the actual wedding.
