Lighting the Room: Considering your location

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I’ve been posting repetitively lately on internet forums and buletin boards about the techniques that I’ve used to create my images at wedding receptions. So I decided to write it down in one place so I didn’t have to continue to repeat myself. I also now have a one day workshop for photographers to solidify some lighitng techniques and thinking. Please contact me to have me present in your city. Here it is:First, you have to decide IF its appropriate to light the room you will be working in primarily with a high powered strobe not attached to your camera, or a shoe flash. There are two considerations: how good do you want your photos to be, and how adaptive is the architecture of your location. I’m going to assume that if you’re expending the energy to read this you might be interested in creating the highest quality of photographs possible. No single technique will ever accomplish engaging photos for you but, since photography is the capture of light your first concern should be the quality of that light. You will have to spend hours, days and month’s learning to appreciate light, but I will recommend these photography books to help you get a cognizant grasp on some of the terminology and complexities of light. Let me recommend a few books for you: “Light Science & Magic” by Hunter and Fuqua as a technically enlightening manual, second “Matters of Light and Depth” by Ross Lowel as a summary text, and finally “Perception and Imaging” by Richard Zakia as my favorite text on photography.Now if you’re still committed to the highest quality of light possible in your photos, you are willing to carry the extra weight of a strobe system. The second thing you’ll need in your bag of tricks is a wireless transmitter for you to attach to your camera and the flash unit. These two systems will cost you an extra $600 at minium, plus the hassel of carting the gear to your events. The last piece of equipment you’ll need is key to achieving the right quality of light in most instances and that is a color temperature modifying filter FOR YOUR LIGHT SOURCE. So read up a bit on that through the link and attach it to your light as appropriate.

Strobe left at 5500k, vaulted 2 story ceiling

Now you need to figure out IF the architecure is going to be forgiving and accepting of your lighting techniques. The ceiling height of your venue is the first limiter. You are limited to the physics of light, the first rule is the inverse square law. The inverse square law defines your light’s intensity as a measure of distance. The simplest way to think of it is that you need to get your light 2x the distance from you to your subject for a normal contrast. But who cares about normal, you want to represent the ‘feel’ of your event. Now walk through your room, assess the position of the door, the entrance path to the head table, the dancefloor angles and where the most common ‘front’ of your subject will be. Most nice recption roooms will have a ceiling that is higher than average allowing you a lot of flexibility with your lighitng intensity and direction. I’ll talk about advanced techniques to overcome low ceilings or smaller width rooms at the end of the tutorial. If the architecture really is impossible then simply move on to advanced camera flash technique.

Posting your light: basic

One of the distinct differences that you can utilize with an off camera light is a backlight situation where you are in control.

So take a minute to think through the vantage points you are likely to want to shoot from during the event. For example, during the toasts you’ll probably want to be able to get a clear view of the speaker’s eyes for an emotional impact and strong engaging subject.

Father toasting bride and groom

For this purpose I bring 3 monolight heads with me to each wedding. If you are limited to one, position your light at the opposite end of the room from where your subjects are most likely to be facing. The above shots were taken in a club room where I was able to light a vaulted and rounded ceiling for extremly gentle lighting. Setup your light head to point directly at the ceiling. The light I was using had an 11inch dish reflector to send all the light from the strobe to the ceiling. The rounded and high ceiling provided the best possible light ’source’. When you are positioning your light, use a reflector or grid that will not allow spill of direct light onto nearby objects. Aim the hottest, or brightest portion of the illumination directly over your subjects without any spill falling directly onto them. You may have to raise your stand above head height and also tip or cheat your aim slightly between you and your subject. Specifically, you can calculate an approximate reflection angle, but the best way is to just test it and see if it works to achieve the aesthetic you want.

Above is a rudementary diagram of how you might approach a room assuming it has a flat ceiling. I thought I’d just toss it together to give you a visual reference for my verbal description above. You must think about your ceiling as the light source as you begin to calculate exposure and placement. If are unlike me and posess a basic understanding of math, you might find my equations helpful. What they are saying is that there’s WAY more light at the point near the lightstand than the point farther away - imagine that! So your challenge will be to manage your falloff as you aim your lighting setup.

The above photo an average example demonstrating a lighting configuration that was limited due to the reception venu table/door arrangement and ceiling structure. At this venue there is a single traingle vault with cross beams which create limiting factors for the lighting setup.

How much power and what exposure?

Now this is key if you’re working in anything but the most optimum space. You have to set your exposure based on the ambient (existing) light, and add to the ambient with your strobe, you can’t overpower reality. Think of it as creating your highlights with the strobe. I have enough power in my strobes to light an entire arena, but If I do that, I’ll completely loose the ambieance of the wedding. Remember your client has worked hard in their planning to create the right ‘feeling’ in their decorations and room arrangement. I can’t give you a ratio or formula for setting your expsure to maintain the greatest degree of ambance in your images. This is something you’re going to have to practice and learn to find and create sweet spots with your bounce angles and falloff. My experience has taught me to take a thu-the-lens meter reading of the room from different angles and give myself one stop faster shutter speed. From there I will increase the power of the room light until it gives me the feel that I’m loooking for.

Use real depth with strobe (notice best man between bottle and candle)

Lateral thinking….avoid the beginner’s mistake

The beginner’s mistake is always to work with direct light. The lighting artist, rarely does. Let’s move into a room with a vaulted ceiling with this diagram. A beginner might drag a light to his event and position it near the dance floor as above and put an umbrella on it and try to shoot the event, always confused by issues of lens flare, harsh shadows and extreme fall off (not enough or too much light for his exposures creating harsh shadows or bright highlights). After reading this, go to all of your locations and figure out from what position you are most likely going to be shooting and turn around 180º. Is that a suitable liight source? Good, bounce your flash off of it.The room pictured above has many options for bouncing your light at differen angles and I would usaully use two lights here to really give a nice round feel. But for the sake of illustration of the main point and that is FALLOFF. You have to learn to manage it, minimize it, and control it. Lighting the dancefloor from next to the dancefloor but reverberating your light will give you a lightsource that is exponetially easier and more pleasing to work with. Why? The farther away your light source the less fallof(contrast now) you have at your subject. Pretty exciting now isn’t it, you’re controling your level of contrast by the diistance from your light source. And you make it so much easier to light the room when you use a large source such as this.

Forget what I just said….for the principles

The shot below was taken in a college cafeteria, but I wasn’t going to allow the florescent fixtures to keep me from portraying their reception in the way that I FELT IT. So I took my exposure from the strobe and overpowered the ambiant. Just remember what you started out this article with - a commitment to great photos!

Feeling and impact are the primary motivators for your viewers. Lets look at your goals for using the light: (listen to me describe them)

Provide a clear subject
Generate compelling color and contrast
Compose the unexpected

1. Provide a clear subject

This is a drag, but you have to shoot at an aperature and shutter speed that allows you a moderately crisp subject. Other than the subject, you’re free to blur, so build as many layers as you can. In your consideration of what is clear, think about the modeling of your subject. Lets go through some questions: Will the light accentuate a texture, or an edge? Will the subject be brighter or darker than the surroundings? Where can you move your feet to accentuate any of these elements of your image?

2. Generate compelling color

Another technicality, but when you grasp the relationships of color, you will begin to see and feel more discerning about the colors you are pairing in your images. Working in color, you must present an acceptable representation of what is REMEMBERD. If your colors are ‘off’ the viewer will not feel as attracted to the image. Once you have gained a deeper perception of color, you will begin to alter your compositions and lighting to accentuate hamonies and dissonances.

3. Compose the unexpected

Once you have arranged your light, contemplated your exposure, medited on color, and found your subject - you can compose the unexpected. “What” you say, finding your subject is not composition? No - composition is placing your subject within their environement and this is where off camer lighting will come alive for you. You can shoot wide or telephoto, you can model the smallest object or capture the fastest action and its all going to have a depth and subtlty that is real and compelling. Don’t just shoot the bride and groom dancing, now that you have a room light, shoot them wiht a foreground and a background. Layer your image. Utilize the light in ways that are compelling and unique. Afterall if the client or guests wanted photos like deer in the headlights, they they’d simply use their point and shoot - wouldn’t they? You need to compose so much into your photo that the viewer has to look twice in surprize, or to take it all in.

What situations does light shine?

Tears: it has been a challenge to capture them…cause you have to make them shine.

Here’s one difference between using available light, and using light that defines your subject. If you’re just using available, you couldn’t get this shot. You could get a shot of ‘when’ she cried and the tear burst and ran all the way down her cheek - but someone who wasn’t there - or who was too old to see it clearly from the back pews, wouldn’t have remembered it. So In this image I have enhanced the remembrance of the ceremony exponentially by isolating the tear with light, and capturing it with timing. This dimly lit chapel would not have allowed me to capture such detail or separation in the tear. I setup an umbrella to the right and behind the camera, as well as an 11″ reflector on an alien-bee monolight to the rear of the chapel to the left of the frame and rear of the subject.