Sometimes I think people can get way too caught up with the gear of photography. When you start getting into lighting you can really start getting gear crazy, you want multiple lights, radio slaves, light modifiers, etc…. Sometimes though keeping your lighting ultra simple can be your best bet and still allow you to get some amazing images! Whenever I am working a wedding I am always looking out for dramatic lighting and love spotlights and other very direct lighting that venues often times have.

This photo is an example of a very quick and easy shot that we got that required no lighting or anything to setup. I was photographing a wedding at a restaurant. It was actually a daytime wedding and the reception was at the main restaurant around 2:00 in the afternoon. In one corner of the room they had this little woven fabric hanging from a tapestry bar. It was a pretty cool texture to use for a background and they had it lit with just one strong spotlight. Even though it was still day and the room had a lot of ambient light I knew that with the power of that spotlight we could create a dramatic image. Setting up this shot was simple, I had to have the subject look slightly up towards the light to avoid any hard shadows under her eyes and set my exposure for the light on her skin. I don’t have the time to get a light meter out while I shoot, so all I do normally is zoom into the area I want to meter and get an exposure from my camera. So I would focus on her face, see what the exposure is there and then manually set that in my camera. That will give you the correct exposure but also since there is such a different with the light on the subject vs. the light on the background your background will become much darker. In this case since it was daylight and there was plenty of light coming in this helped me to get a nice dark and dramatic background where the subject can just pop right out of. If you would have just let your camera average out the scene it would have made that background more true to real life so it would have been much lighter and then the subject would have been way too light and blown out.

You can also change how dramatic the light is by simply having your subject move the angle of their head. The more the subject is facing the spotlight the flatter the light. The more that they turn away from the light the more dramatic the shadows will be. If you want something very dramatic like Hollywood lighting then just turn the subject slightly away from the light. Also check out our post on Hollywood lighting from awhile back here: Holllywood lighting for photography

It only took a few minutes to shoot and we captured some great images of the bride that were very dramatic, all done with existing light during the day. Here is a shot of my wonderful assistant modeling for me as we tested out the light beforehand.

For those interested here are the tech specs for this shot:
Canon 5d
ISO 800
50mm 1.4 lens
1/40th second @ f/3.2

This post is sponsored by Collages.net

Shooting a lot of wedding and portraits on location I am constantly battling the full day sun and trying to get creative with lighting during some of these harsh shooting conditions. One bummer about flash is that you normally end up shooting with a aperture that is f/8 or higher because of the shutter sync that most cameras have. Most SLR cameras have a shutter sync at around 1/200th of a second meaning that you have to shoot at 1/200 when using a flash. This means that during the daytime even when setting your ISO to 100 you are shooting with a very high aperture which might not let you create the shallow depth of field you would want for a portrait. Well there may finally be a solution to this problem! Pocketwizards new FlexTT5 system and Canon high speed sync. I saw these at the Pocketwizard booth this year at WPPI and didn’t have time to really look into them until recently, and have to say they do look pretty amazing. I have some on order right now through B&H so once they come in and I have some times to test them out i’ll post some extensive reviews here.

Do you use high speed sync in your photography? Let us know what you think about it in the comments below or add a few links to your shots!

In the meantime check out this really informative video that pocketwizard created. They give you some very good information about high speed sync and how it works and explains it in a very easy to understand format.

Here is a amazon link for the 580 flash they used in this demo along with the pocketwizards, these are the best buys I found on the web:

Canon Speedlite 580EX II

PocketWizard MiniTT1

Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 Transceiver

Ruth Wylie- Hollywood lighting., originally uploaded by FlyWheel Photography.

I know some photographers who think that some of the classic photography from years past is dated and boring. Photographers today want that ultra sexy, hot and contemporary shot that just knocks everyone’s socks off. But just like with anything we can always learn a lot from the past, and 50-60 years ago there was really some amazing images coming out of hollywood that also would fit the style of what clients are looking for today.

Hollywood lighting. One of the key characteristics that defined this style of Hollywood lighting was a very dramatic light with the main key light normally coming from high above the subject. This adds some shadow to the face which gives the person depth and also adds some extra drama to the image. The lighting for these types of images is generally not shot with flash units or strobes. Although you could use a flash to light, most photographers prefer a Fresnel Light which is a continuous light that can be focused. Being able to focus your light is really key for these types of shots, you want a very dramatic light that is coming in like a spotlight would be. So you need to be able to have your light be very targeted. With a strobe you can use a snoot or really anything handmade that you attach to the strobe unit to keep the light from spilling all over the image. Some black cardboard taped to all 4 sides of your flash can do a great job to create a very focused spotlight type of light. And although a Fresnel Light is still a pretty harsh light it does have a softer quality compared to strobes. In addition to the main light these types of images normally have a little bit of fill light to balance out the light and then one or two lights in the back to sometimes create a light effect on the background or to create a rim light around the subject.

If you are looking to learn more about this type of lighting one of the most classic books with lots of real world examples and how the lighting was done is:
Hollywood Portraits: Classic Shots and How to Take Them

Check out this great video tutorial below showing a few hollywood inspired images along with a lighting diagram on how they were created.

This post is sponsored by Collages.net

Sometimes I love shooting a bride and groom at night. When you get to use all artificial light, you can get get so creative and really have some fun with the shoot. Sometimes when photographing a wedding you always don’t have a lot of time set aside to shoot images of the bride and groom. Sometimes by the time the ceremony ends the sun is going down and you only have the nighttime to shoot. Instead of thinking of this as a bummer think of it as a really amazing opportunity to create some great images. When shooting at night you have a totally blank canvas to work with and depending on how you light the image you can create anything you want to. Think of it as a blank canvas to work with where the possibilities are endless!

This image was taken during the middle of the reception while the dancing was going on. After shooting some dancing for awhile we wanted to get one more series of the bride and groom together, so went outside to scout out the area. Sometimes we will go to the lobby of the location or look for interesting spots outside to shoot and there wasn’t much to work with at this spot other than a large empty field behind the building that had a few large oak trees. It was pitch black back here so we had to light everything we wanted to highlight in the image. We first lit the bride and groom with a Q-Flash that has a little mini softbox on it. The light was setup just to the right of the camera and very high. (getting your flash off camera really brings out the detail in her dress). The 2nd light was setup to highlight the oak tree (one more Q-Flash) and we wanted some interesting dimension to the tree, so we lit it from the far left and behind the tree. This way the light was coming across the tree and creating some cool shadows and depth to the image. Finally we have a vivitar 285 flash setup just behind the bride and groom slightly to the right of them to create a little light along the side of her dress and the veil. For the first shot below (our favorite from the series) the 3rd light actually didn’t fire (batteries were a little low and didn’t wait long enough for the flash to recycle) but the second shot you can see the effect of this 3rd light. The color is a little different on these two just because the first has been photoshopped and the second hasn’t really been touched up yet.

To fire the lights we used our trusty pocketwizards. A little bit of photoshop work was done just to soften the image up and put a little glow around her dress. This just gave it a little more of a romantic feel.

Tech Specs:

Camera: Canon 20d
ISO: 800
Exposure Program: Manual
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
F-Stop: f/5.0
lens: Canon EF 10-22mm f/2.8L
set to 10.00mm

Here is also a different angle in this series where you can really see the effect of the 3rd light. The light on his back really separates him from the background and gives him more depth. Adding a little key light coming in from the side or back can add just a little highlight that really can help your image pop.

For anyone interested here is a Amazon links to some of the lighting gear we use

Digital Photo Buzz Lighting Gear

As always comments and questions are appreciated, drop us a line below.

I mentioned awhile back how the first dance and some of the dancing at a wedding as one of my favorite times to shoot (creative wedding reception lighting article here). The reason is with a nice dark dance floor is the the perfect opportunity to get creative with lighting. One thing that I love to do is use the videographers light backlighting the bride and groom to create a cool light. Sometimes it is just a backlight for the effect and I still will use my flash as the main light, other times I will use it as a dramatic side light with no other flash. It really depends on the effect I am going for and how much ambient light I have to deal with. Here are a few images from a recent shoot where I used the videographers light for a nice effect.

The first shot my flash was turned off and I only used the room light for my main light. With the ISO of the 5d I can shoot at ISO 1000 or above and still get a good file and I usually shoot these at f/2.8 or lower so don’t need a ton of light to get my subjects exposed. I always figure out my exposure before the dancing starts (at the middle of the dance floor) and set my exposure to manual. Then i’ll shoot some frames with the videographer in a different part of the shot. I might have their light right in between the couple or barely on the side of one of their heads or even totally to the side. Each spot the light is at will have a pretty big difference on the effect of the light so experiment. But remember to experiment after you get the shot nailed, first get the good shot you know your client will want. Then have fun!

Sometimes I’ll have my external flash units on and just use the video light as a little accent behind them or on the side. That is what I did here, I framed the videographer in just to add a extra dynamic to the shot. The subjects will be exposed perfect from your main flash and the video light just adds a visual element to the shot.

And this final example is another one with no flash at all, just exposed properly for the subject and then framing the video light in between them.

Have a dance shot you love? Post a link to it in the comments.

The couple, originally uploaded by AndWhyNot.

This is such a great portrait that I came across on Flickr awhile back. I think its a great example of a really unique portrait that combines a lot of perfect lighting skills. This was taken with a camera mounted on the cars hood as the car was moving with a long shutter speed. Its a really cool mix of light painting (having a long shutter speed and letting light create interesting shapes and compositions) and a portrait lit with strobes.

Lighting Info: diffused SB-600 in car dead centre between camera and models; bare SB-800 dead centre behind models for rim.
Moving car, 30sec, straight out of camera

This really inspired me to look more info Light painting and I have found some awesome artists online that are creating some really cool work in this field. I’ll share some of them and the work they are doing over the next few weeks, along with an interview with a filmmaker who is doing an entire documentary on Light painting.

What do you think of this shot? Would love to hear your comments. Also if you do any light painting photography please share your link in the comments I would love to see your work!

The photo of the week this week is another off camera lighting example. So many times when shooting weddings you don’t have the time to get all of the shots you would like of the bride and groom during the day. At night there can be so many really creative things you can do by adding just a few lights to the scene.

At this particular wedding there was a cool walkway that was lined with trees. During the day it just looked decent but I knew that it could really look spectacular at night. The lighting was actually pretty simple for this and depending on the angle that we shot at were able to get a few very different looking images without taking up a lot of time. For these types of shots I usually pull the bride and groom off the dance floor for a minute and don’t want to take up a lot of their fun reception time so try and keep the shoot under 5 minutes.

There were 4 lights for the shot, 2 quantum Q-Flash that were near the end of the walkway at full power. These were at the edge of the walkway pointing back towards the center of the image and pointing up to light up the tree’s. Since they were pointing up and in from opposite sides of the walkway they created some cool cross lighting on the trees. There was also a small vivitar Vivitar 285HV Auto Professional Flash that was to the left of the couple. If you look at the tree to the far left of the shot there was a vivitar hidden behind that tree pointed towards the couple. This was set to 1/2 power and gave that nice highlight along the back of the bride.

The main light was a Alien bee B800 with a medium softbox at about 30 degrees to the right of the camera. Since we moved the bride and groom around for a few different poses the main light was setup to be a fairly flat light, that way we could move them around a little bit and still have good light on them. If you are only going to put them into one position try moving the light a little more to the side to create a more dramatic directional light.

Here are a few other variations of this lighting setup. You can move the lights in the back to be behind the trees, that way they won’t show up in the shot but still create that cool cross light for the trees. Also check out the great shadow that the light in the back creates on the tree leading right up to the bride and groom.

Or you can also include both of those lights in the background in the shot. I personally like to include the lights in the shot sometimes and think it add some visual interest to the image.

Do you have an amazing image you are proud of and want to share with everyone? Click the contact button above and send us a message, we would love to have one of your shots as our photo of the week. Also if you have any questions, comments or feedback leave a comment below. I would love to know what you think of this image (the good or bad) what would you do to improve it?

One part of the wedding day that I really love to photograph (actually I love it all, but for the sake of this article one part I really love) is the first dance and father/daughter, mother/son dance. Normally these are in the reception venue where the lights come down, creating a nice dark room. I love to think of dark places as a nice blank canvas ready to create whatever vision is in my mind.

There are a couple of things I normally do at reception venues to create artistic light. With an average size room what I will usually do is put 2 lights on opposite corners of the dance floor. One will be an alien bee B800 which produces a lot of light. If you are looking for a nice and portable monolight, these alien bees are great. We have used 3 of them in the studio for about 6 years, they are reliable and priced very well. Check them out here: http://www.alienbees.com

Depending on the size of the room I will normally point it towards the ceiling and have it around 1/2 power. This will bounce off the ceiling and give a good overall light covering the dance floor from above. Then I will setup a smaller unit like a Vivitar 285 ( Vivitar 285HV Auto Professional Flash) or just a canon speedlight. I will adjust the power of this depending on the distance to the middle of the dance floor and how dark the room is. This will be used sometimes as the main light or a dramatic backlight depending on what angle I shoot from.
To read a review of the vivitar 285’s read this review we did, Vivitar 285 flash review

There are so many different things you can do with this type of light. Here is an example with a vivitar setup on one corner of the dance floor and on the other opposite corner an alien bee. In this shot the vivitar was set to 1/2 power and positioned right behind the brides head. The alien been was set to about 1/4 power bouncing off the ceiling to give a good fill light. Shooting with the vivitar right behind the subject but just barely visible creates that really cool burst of light and also an interesting shadow on the floor coming towards the camera. The light on the other side fills in their face so they are well lit.

This next shot is on the same dance floor. If you are looking at the image above, the camera for this 2nd shot is going to be just to the left of the heat lamp that is in the background. So the vivitar flash is now coming in from the left of the camera at about a 45 degree angle and the other light is still just giving a broad fill to the dance floor. You can see the really nice dimensional light that this gives to the girl in red though. Look at her face and the dimension that you have from the light coming in from the left side. Also since the alien bee is coming in from the right this does create a little highlight around the right side of her arm giving it shading and again more dimension to the photo. Using a few lights off camera can really make your images pop and the options are only limited by your creativity!

If you have a question just leave a comment below and we will answer you!

Sometimes people think with off camera lighting you need expensive, big gear to slug around all day with you. They get scared of off camera lighting because they think it is too difficult to learn or for wedding photographers that it will slow them down too much. Today we are going to review a classic flash unit that is inexpensive and very simple to setup for off camera light….. The Vivitar 285. This until was a classic years ago as a reliable and inexpensive flash until that was all manual so you have full control of the light. Vivitar discounted these awhile back but a few years ago re-released them as the Vivitar 285HV.

Even though I have a few Canon 580’s they rarely get used anymore. The TTL and auto features that these new flash units have never seem to work great, the exposure is always off and if you leave them on TTL you can’t get creative with the light. I bought a few 285HV’s a few years ago and now use these much more than my Canon 580’s. There are a few reasons why I really love these flash units:
1) They are totally manual simple to use flash units. There are only 4 settings for the flash; full power, 1/2 power, 1/4 power and 1/16 power.
2) They are a great deal, you can pick them up on Amazon for just $89. Vivitar 285HV Auto Professional Flash
For that price you can pick up about 5 units for the price of a normal Canon or Nikon speedlight.

Our normal setup for a wedding reception we will just use two of these Vivitars setup on light stands to light the dance floor and for a medium sized room they will give you plenty of light. We also use them for artistic night shots of the bride and groom or even during the day in full sun to get creative. I’ll be posting a entire series of articles on off camera light in the coming weeks with sample images and how we created those so stay tuned.

In addition to the flash until there are a few additional things you need to remotely fire these flashes (or any off camera flash) and these are where a little more of the expenses come in. We use basic 7′ light stands that are very lightweight and travel easy. These are fairly inexpensive you can usually get one for $30-$40. On top of the light stand we use a Multiclamp that rotates so we can adjust the angle of the flash and that connects to a hotshoe mount that has a miniphone jack which will plug into the pocketwizard. We use Pocketwizards transceivers to fire the flashes and just velcro those to the side of the flash unit. I know its a lot of stuff plugging into each other and can be a little confusing. Here is a photo of the setup so you can see how it all fits together.

You can also see from the detail photo that we use some gaffers tape on the hotshoe mount. Those never seem to have a good fit to the flash so we throw a little tape on it to secure it and make sure there is a good connection with the flash.

Here are some amazon links to a few products we use for our setup:

Westcott 750 Photo Basics 7.0-Foot Light Stand

Shoe Mount Multiclamp

PocketWizard PWP-TR 801-125 PLUS II Transceiver (Black)

Paramount 1′ Straight Sync Cord, Miniphone to Hot Shoe Female, Pocket Wizard

And finally for all of you tech people out there, here are the tech specs for the flash:

• Guide number 120 (ISO 100/feet).
• Automatic exposure range to 70 feet.
• Accepts optional high voltage power sources for faster recycle time and more flashes.
• Four auto f/stop settings for controlling depth-of-field and maximum auto flash range.
• Zoom flash head has three positions for covering 35mm, 50mm and 105mm camera lenses.
• Bounce flash capability for softer lighting.
• Removable sensor can be camera mounted with the optional sensor cord permitting automatic exposure when using side bounce flash photography.
• Built-in vari-power for convenient fill flash and rapid sequence photography.
• Auto Thyristor circuitry for faster recycle time and greater number of flashes.

In conclusion if you are looking for a really great way to get creative with off camera flash and don’t want to spend a great deal of money try adding a couple of these to your gear bags. The possibilities are endless with off camera flash!

The Art of Lighting is such a key part of photography and unfortunately sometimes overlooked. WIth all of the progressions in technology in cameras and in on camera flash, you can get a decent image even in a dark reception hall without knowing much about lighting. But for your wedding photos who wants decent images when your photos can POP and look amazing no matter where your wedding or ceremony are. This post is one of a few to come about lighting and the importance of good quality, artistic lighting and will just be an intro for some of the blog posts to come. For all of the photographers that read the blog i’ll give some tips and easy lighting techniques that I use to create images that can really sparkle.

For photographing weddings light is THE key choice and what we look for when thinking about how to photograph each scene. Lots of weddings are very fast paced and can be outdoors in full sun or other tricky situations. There are many ways to deal with each setup that will give you such different looks. I’ll give you a few examples of what I do with lighting in different types of environments that work with my style of photography. I’ll also give you some examples of very quick lighting for receptions that can elevate photos above the normal boring, flat lighting.

The best tip to start is to take your flash off your camera. Certain parts of events (when you are really moving around a lot) it does make sense to have your flash on camera. But when you know your subjects will be in a contained area like the first dance for a bride and groom take that flash off the camera! The easiest thing to do when starting out is simply buy a extension cord for your flash that will allow you to still have your flash plugged into your camera but gives you control to move it a few feet away from the camera. You can basically just hold your flash with one arm as high as you can and to the side and start to see the big different that makes in the image.

Light is key to being creative with your photography. There are so many ways to creatively use any type of light from mid day sun, to low light at the end of the day and external light. Start to really think about the direction that your light is coming from in your shots and what you can do to make it more dynamic. Light coming from straight on makes everything look flat so try and get the light coming in from a different angle and see what that does to your shot. The great thing with digital photography is the learning curve is so much faster than it used to be. You can do some testing and see the difference right away.

Here is a shot that we did in a pitch black field. It was an awesome shot to end the wedding and made a perfect full page spread in their album. I’ll give a breakdown on how this image was made next week in our shot of the week post. Update: read how we got this shot here (Using on location off camera lighting)

You can also read a few of our other lighting articles here: