With every wedding we shoot, we make a concerted effort to show up early enough so that we have time to set up our lights, and do some test shots, that way when the ceremony is over, our lights are all ready to go - we just show up at the reception site, turn on the PocketWizards and get to work.

In this shot we had a challenge that I’m sure most wedding photographers encounter at some point or another - lighting an outdoor venue, in the evening. Now, we’ve been through this before, but I have to say that each time is a little different. A lighting setup that worked for one situation doesn’t always work for another, which is where the preparation comes in. Earlier in the day, Anne and I showed up and decided that we wanted to set up the lights in opposite corners of the dance floor. The lights we use are Quantum T2 models with Turbo battery packs. We had these set on 1/8th power, they were set up about 10ft. in the air, and triggered of course with PocketWizards.

By the time the ceremony was over, we were at a point where daylight was becoming more and more scarce. I had already decided early on that I wanted to shoot the dancing shots with my shutter a little slower than I normally shoot (1/25th) to retain a little subject movement. I chose to use my favorite wide lens, Canon’s 14mm f2.8L to really just frame out the dance floor and our lighting setup, and I was shooting at f5.6 at 400 ISO.

The majority of credit for this shot really goes out to the bride and her dad. They simply provided me with an extremely well-choreographed dance number, and after watching them for about a minute, I knew that I was going to snap that shutter at a point in their dance that they had repeated earlier, and at just the right moment, they swung apart from each other, hands extended outward, and what we end up with is a graceful and dramatic shot from a very brief moment in this father-daughter dance. The light set up on camera-right acts as kind of a prop in and of itself, and while the moment itself carries some drama with it, I think including the light in the shot takes it up a notch.

As I stated earlier, this shot exemplifies exactly what we’re about - creating simplistic yet dramatic images for our clients. We use our lights to solve problems, and in some cases the light itself steps up front and center to enhance a moment into something much more powerful.

I think the funniest part about this photo is that it was hugely luck. Sure, we triggered the flash to bounce off the tent ceiling in front of the bride, but there is no way we could ever duplicate this shot! The bride’s arms are poised so beautifully (you can even see her ring shining on her left hand), and the bouquet is so perfectly silhouetted. We couldn’t have directed it if we had tried! I didn’t crop this image at all; this is what I got straight from the camera with just a bump of contrast.

To get it, I sat down right behind the bride on the dance floor, and set my camera to burst (I don’t usually shoot burst or I end up with 50 gazillion photos - ha). When she tossed the bouquet, I pretty much shot wildly, trying to track her arms and the bouquet backwards across the ceiling and to the girls waiting to catch it.

This was the first frame I got of the toss. The others were pretty useless. I’ve learned since that it’s MUCH safer to shoot WIDE during a scene like this, but I can’t regret the narrow frame in this case because I feel like it made for a really classic image.