Fiona & John

If you checked into the blog over the weekend you may have noticed not much was changing – that’s because I was offline in Sneem, Kerry for three days to enjoy the celebrations for Fiona and John’s wedding on Saturday.  I’ve posted Sunday and Monday’s images now, and have also started to process photos from the wedding.  This shot of the lovely couple from their first dance is one of my favourite first dance shots that I’ve taken.

It’s no surprise I’m sure that I take a lot of photographs at weddings, and for Fiona & John’s big day I was hopeful of getting some nice images in particular at the reception.  The room in which it was being held was a huge square room with an 18 foot ceiling and glass walls along two sides.  Even so, the light levels in the room were low, and made photographing the speeches in particular challenging.  Before the first dance I fell back on a technique I’ve used before to bring back the light levels to create a nice first dance image.

As the band were setting up I positioned two off camera flashes discreetly at the edges of the room.  It was important that they would be unobtrusive, and so one was clamped to a screen already positioned in one corner of the room, while the other was clamped to one of those bars at the top of an (unused) exit door that ensures it closes.  The two flashes were along the same wall and pointing at opposite corners, and so roughly cross lighting the dance floor.

They were triggered again by my D300′s pop up flash, which allowed me adjust their power.  I considered using my Elinchrom Skyport radio triggers which would ensure they’d fire whichever way I was pointing my camera, but I would have had to stick with their power settings once they were mounted, whereas the D300 would allow me adjust power as I shot.  As it turned out they stayed pretty much consistently at 1/4th power and so the radio triggers would have been a better option.

As their first dance started – Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” – I was confident of getting a well lit shot.  The best photo, which you see above, came as they smiled for someone elses camera off to my right.  At this angle, one flash is 45 degrees behind Fiona and the other is 45 degrees behind John.  The first gives a nice rim light on both of them while the second throws enough light across their faces to capture their smiles.

The addition of light allows me to get a nicely controlled exposure, keeping detail in Fiona’s dress and John’s waistcoat, without having to push ISO or risk camera shake or motion blur with slow shutter speeds.  The only thing I did struggle with using this two light off camera setup was focus – with low light levels in the room my camera sometimes hunted to find the point of focus, and at times I switched to manual focus to ensure I got the shot.  For this shot I was focusing automatically, and thankfully the camera was able to keep up.

I think this is a nice shot of the happy couple enjoying what was a great day.  I have more shots to process from the wedding over the next day or two so no doubt one or two will find their way on here.   The extended break allowed me sometime to explore Sneem and its scenic surroundings, so keep an eye out for some of that stunning scenery in the next few days also.  Speaking of stunning scenery, Fiona and John are off on their honeymoon today to Santorini and I’m more than a little bit jealous.  John has promised to limit his photography while there.  I suspect it’ll be a struggle.