It is common knowledge that photography (literally ‘light- writing’) depends for its existence on light. Yet, how many of us really understand the way light behaves, how it can be controlled, and the impact it has on our images?

When I came into social photography from the once ‘glamorous’ world of television, I was surprised to find that in the United Kingdom at least there was no obvious established training route for core camera and lighting skills designed specifically for wedding photographers. The extensive knowledge I had gained from my formal training seemed to have no equal in the ‘still’ photography world. I’m talking about 6 weeks’ full-time studying lighting and a further 6 months on attachment as a lighting director in the studios of London. I can see now that this was worth more, far more than I gave credit for at the time. I believethere is no substitute for a thorough understanding of light and its application when creating images, whether still or moving. In this chapter, I want to touch on some of the most common lighting decisions Julie and I take when shooting weddings. It’s also worth noting that the majority of techniques we use on the wedding day are equally applicable to portraiture.

Whatever the situation, the first step is to assess the light around you. When we enter a room or anywhere that we are going to be taking photographs, we immediately consider the direction and quantity of light. We then look at the suitability of the background. For example, when Julie photographs the bride getting ready, it’s quite normal for her to rearrange the position of the people and some furniture in the room so that the bride is well lit against an uncluttered background.

Both the uncluttered and well-lit factors are trademarks of our style. We take a proactive approach to getting this type of image. We certainly like to set up and simplify the environment we shoot in. We also set up all of our still life images: this is how we get our ‘look.’ Having established the ‘ideal’ environment for our shots, Julie and I can let the action take place without intervention, knowing all the pictures will be clean.

During hectic wedding preparations, it sometimes happens that the only available clutter-free background in a bedroom is the window. That’s fine – shooting into a window has many benefits. Windows provide strong graphic background shapes of bright, high-key tone. They can also add depth and sometimes emphasize the illusion of three dimensions in the resulting prints. Window-backed images can be made with a simple exposure increase or are remarkably easy to light with through the lens (TTL) handheld flash. Even if it’s gloomy or raining outside the pictures, we shoot into windows to give a bright vibrant look to the wedding album.

After assessing a lighting situation, we may decide not to use artificial light, but to go with the existing available light. In that case, several factors that affect the image quality need consideration: these include ISO, aperture, shutter speed, color, tone, and subject. Making ‘natural light’ pictures can be rewarding when everything comes together well. f/4 shooters like Julie and I use just enough depth of field to render our subject in sharp focus while maintaining beautiful out of focus backgrounds to support the final composition. The great reportage photographers have learned to read natural light well and produce some of their most dramatic images in what might seem like ‘impossible’ lighting conditions. Having a ‘fast’ 50-mm f/1.4 lens opens up a world of opportunity often overlooked by other photographers.

In the fashion, commercial, and illustrative photographic world a picture need not flatter the subject as long as it conveys the right message. But for wedding photographers flattery is everything. Making a bride look great by lighting her from the ‘right’ side or angle is vital. A simple question I ask myself when I compose each image is ‘Does the person I’m photographing look great in this picture?’ If not ‘why not?’ Often the answer is simple. If a groom has a bent nose for instance, lighting his face from the same direction as the bend in his nose will cast a small insignificant nose shadow reducing the effect of the bend. Light him from the other side and wallop! his nose shadow scoots across his face and accentuates the bent nose.

The wedding make-up artist works hard to accentuate cheekbones and the jaw line; it’s then up to us to take the process to the next stage. It’s not difficult to take beautifully lit pictures, you just need to know what you are trying to achieve and how to do it. For example, you need to remember that attaching the flash to a camera removes the whole creative process of lighting. What this achieves is simply to illuminate the scene. On the other hand, using the flashgun off-camera while maintaining TTL functionality gives modeling to a face and is a technique Julie and I use extensively. But don’t take our word for it. Experiment and find out what works best for you.

We certainly needed to change our working method several times before we hit upon a balance between aesthetic and technical quality. But whatever we do, the core principles of lighting still remain in our shots.

In classical portraiture, the key or principal light is usually a hard light source. The shape and size of the subject’s nose and the depth of the eye sockets govern their position. There’s nothing new about this. In fact, the artist Rembrandt is considered by many to be the founder of the principles for portrait lighting. He made a few mistakes by modern convention but went on to develop a formula that worked, and made it his own. The important point to note here is the key light angle and position are always determined by the position of the face of the sitter, and not the position of the camera (or the painter for that matter!).

THE COLOR OF LIGHT

The various natural colors of light create opportunities to be exploited at weddings. In the days of film, I often had to filter light to get the correct ‘look’ that meant ‘warming up’ overcast light and ‘bluing’ tungsten-lit shots. Knowing and understanding color temperature was a must. Now, using digital capture, the white balance adjustments available in a camera or software can take care of that. In fact, I usually like to include as many light sources as I can in my pictures. UK winter weddings are hard work because of the sheer lack of light, but they offer wonderful opportunities for capturing a great variety of colored light in your pictures.

SHADOWS

Shadows reveal shape, light, and texture. What’s more they’re always available, easy to create, and very useful for adding graphical elements and interesting shapes to our wedding pictures. Try not to confuse the hardness of a shadow with its contrast or depth. Hard shadows have crisp edges while soft shadows have diffused edges. When lighting faces or objects, it is worth noting that both hard and soft shadows reveal shape. In dark skin, it is the highlights and not the shadows that reveal shape. The contrast or depth of a shadow that is created is dependent upon the ratio of direct and indirect light.

It is important to realize that it is impossible to ‘light out’ a shadow. You can ‘fill’ a shadow to reduce its contrast until it becomes much less significant, but it will still be there. Press photographers use flash mounted directly on camera extensively but sparingly in daylight to ‘fill’ the shadows created by the sun and thus reduce contrast. On-camera flash used subtly in this way is a great hard-fill light source. But when flash is used as the key or principal light then always use it off-camera.

BRIGHT HORIZONS

Throughout the natural world the norm is for the brightest part of a scene to be the most distant. Take this, a most obvious scenario: you are standing on a cliff looking out to sea, the sun is shining, the sky and sea are blue. The brightest part of the scene (sun excepted) is the horizon. Throughout the world of fine art, from the old masters to the present works, this ‘rule’ of the distant being the brightest is used time and time again. This tonal variation linked to distance from camera creates depth in the image. Julie and I try and apply the same techniques on the wedding day itself where situations allow.

FLASH AND AMBIENCE

In a naturally lit world we expect to see room interiors darker at the top and lighter at the bottom. This is because light enters a window in a downward direction predominantly from the sky above. It is this simple truth that makes bounced flash pictures look so unnatural. A characteristic of bounced flash is for the floor to be the darkest part of the image and the ceiling to be the brightest – quite the opposite of the normal situation.

At a wedding, you need to achieve a balance when lighting interiors. Do you light the room and let the action happen or do you light the people in the room and accept the ambience for the room? We do both, we expose the image so that the room’s natural lighting prevails and then add flash or a tungsten spot to light the subject. Lighting the subject beautifully nearly always requires the light source to be away from the camera. Flash has the advantage of freezing the subject in the often lengthy exposures but is harder to control. Once a system that works has been adopted and learned, applying it is easy.

LOW KEY

Julie and I always try to avoid ‘black holes’ in our wedding pictures. One exception to this rule is when we want to shoot low key. Oak-paneled rooms and wet winter weddings pose their own problems but they also create opportunities to change the shooting style. One of the biggest problems we encounter is cutting flash output to avoid overexposure. Getting a bit of specula reflection of the flash in the background reveals texture and brings the picture to life. If our pictures combine the ambience of the wedding venue and show detail and beauty of the clients then we have succeeded. Once you’ve decided on the lighting, then all that’s left is to make the picture‘happen.’ We nearly always create or stimulate the energy and fun in our pictures after the shooting techniques have beenestablished.