Horrible indoor lighting, massive crowds, AV equipment galore

How do you guys deal with weddings that have the following in the way?

1. Horrible indoor lighting (mixed of tungsten, flourescent, and phosporous)
2. Large crowds
3. Audio/Visual equipment all over the place

I just attended a Chinese wedding in a Chinese restaurant with nasty lighting, orange/peach colored walls, speakers, wires, cheap rugs, duct tape, about 400 people...

I'm not a wedding photographer, but I'd like to be one of those nonintrusive-nondistracting-respectful-of-the-hired-guy photographers that just wants to be good at photography. The main photographer at this wedding actually asked for my help a couple times because of what I mentioned above, so he appreciated that I could take care of the "simpler" tasks that day (both of us know the bride and groom).

Despite the "success" of my shooting for my own leisure, there were countless shots with scraggly carpet under the bride's shoes, duct tape on the ground, speakers just tucking behind the subjects, and white balance issues even PS can't erase. I had about a 30% keeper rate, and granted it's been a long time since I've done any serious shooting I expected higher.

what do you guys do?

You can't make a crappy venue look great. Longer lenses and blurring the background would be about the best option, if you can get a clear shot.

you can use flash and adjust the shutter speed to take out the ambient lighting.

I deal with that on a month to month basic. It's tough, and that's why gwc or soccer mom with camera ain't gonna cut it in this biz and there's no one answer will solve that problem. It takes experience and in-depth technical knowledge of your equipment to make it look good.

drPheta wrote in post #10272576
How do you guys deal with weddings that have the following in the way?

1. Horrible indoor lighting (mixed of tungsten, flourescent, and phosporous)
2. Large crowds
3. Audio/Visual equipment all over the place

I just attended a Chinese wedding in a Chinese restaurant with nasty lighting, orange/peach colored walls, speakers, wires, cheap rugs, duct tape, about 400 people...

I'm not a wedding photographer, but I'd like to be one of those nonintrusive-nondistracting-respectful-of-the-hired-guy photographers that just wants to be good at photography. The main photographer at this wedding actually asked for my help a couple times because of what I mentioned above, so he appreciated that I could take care of the "simpler" tasks that day (both of us know the bride and groom).

Despite the "success" of my shooting for my own leisure, there were countless shots with scraggly carpet under the bride's shoes, duct tape on the ground, speakers just tucking behind the subjects, and white balance issues even PS can't erase. I had about a 30% keeper rate, and granted it's been a long time since I've done any serious shooting I expected higher.

what do you guys do?

This is always a challenge.
Sounds to me like you didn't really have a choice. At what point do you just say to yourself that this was the environment which you shot in, so screw it, they are going to see some distracting elements? If they wanted "pretty", they should have had the wedding at a country club or the beach!

As already mentioned, shoot tight, or use creative lighting techniques to eliminate/minimize BG distractions.

Got the option to turn off the fluorescents and anything else not on the color balance of the tungsten? that will help...

just echoing the others
ugh...sounds like a nightmare lol
taking a photojournalistic approach
embrace the noise, embrace some black and white, embrace some movement blur, embrace the candids

that's easy... you just turn down weddings in those types of locations.

B&W