"Lessons Learned" from Photographing our Last Wedding

[keithsnell]

I often think about posting on a particular topic, only to put it off until so much time has past that other issues have taken priority.  So, while I'm still thinking about it, I thought I would post a running commentary of "lessons learned" from our recent wedding photography.  

First, a little context is probably in order.  Although Rebecca and I typically photograph about one wedding per year, we don't advertise ourselves as wedding photographers, and it's certainly not the primary focus of our efforts.  (I'd much rather be teaching a photography workshop in Yellowstone.   )  Still, photographing a wedding is a great opportunity to hone and expand our skill set as photographers, and we won't hesitate to photograph a wedding when asked.  This last wedding was for my nephew in Wisconsin, and we photographed the wedding as a wedding gift for the couple.  Although I'm posting "lessons learned" (or identifying things we could do better in the future) I don't want to imply that we did a lousy job photographing the wedding.  We put a lot of effort into photographing the events of the wedding day, and capturing special moments throughout the day.  By the end of the day, Rebecca and I had recorded a total of 2,250 images.  That's a lot of editing on the computer, and fertile ground for a lot of lessons learned.  We've only had time so far for a quick run through the images, and I will probably continue to add to this thread as I get deeper into the images.  

This thread will probably be more of a "stream of consciousness" as I think about particular aspects of the wedding, so please bear with me.

Typically we meet with the couple well before the wedding, and then spend several months corresponding with them via email to develop a shot list based on the wedding plans.  We'll work with the couple to make sure they've allocated enough time for formals, coordinated with all the key people as to when and where to meet for the formals, etc.  We usually end up building a detailed schedule for the bride and groom and provide that to them to share with the wedding party.  This last wedding was a challenge, both because of the long distance between us and the wedding couple, and because they are both young students working their way through college.  Not only were they overwhelmed with school and work, but they were a bit more "easy going" when it came to pinning down plans for the wedding.    I never really felt comfortable that we had a coordinated shot list.

We prefer to photograph the bride and groom (and sometimes the wedding party) before the ceremony, but sometimes they prefer to schedule all of the formals between the ceremony and the reception, which was the case with this wedding.  I try to lay out the order of the formals so that we can progressively build up the group in a logical order.  I usually start with the bride and her family, progressively add more people to the group until we have the entire family included, then I add the groom and gradually work our way back down to the couple, pull out the bride, and then build up the groom's family the same way.  We'll let the family go to the reception, and then work the wedding party shots in the same way, then send the wedding party on the way to the reception, and take the formals of the bride and groom.  In order to do this smoothly, we need a good idea of who will be there from the bride and groom's family, and we never quite got that pinned down for my nephew's wedding.  This sets the context for something that I will talk about later...

The bride wanted formals outdoors, but didn't actually pick out a location for the outdoor portraits until the day of the wedding!  To add to the complexity, the weather forecast for the wedding day changed dramatically throughout the week, alternating between "sunny" and a 70% chance of thunderstorms.  The day of the wedding was rainy, and we made the decision to photograph formals in the church, but to also take some outdoors if there was a lull in the rain (which there was).

Rebecca started "following the bride" to photograph the events of the day at 8 AM for her hair appointment.  She stayed with the bride from that time until the beginning of the wedding ceremony at 2:30 PM, and was able to capture some wonderful images of the preparations for the wedding.  Evan and McKenzie helped me get the flash and camera equipment in order, and we met the groom and groomsmen at the church at noon to photograph their preparations for the wedding.  The groom's party played cards, foosball and other games in the basement of the church for about an hour, which gave me time to set up and test the lights in the sanctuary, then store them away in a back hall for after the ceremony.  

It took me a bit longer to set up and test the lights than anticipated, and I had to rush to get down to the groom's room before I missed too much of the preparations.  This experience reinforced a "lesson learned" that I needed to simplify my setup.  I was planning to shoot the formals with dual SB-80 flashes firing into an umbrella for the key light, and dual SB-800s (the same ones we had on our cameras) shooting into an umbrella for the fill light.  I had  inexpensive external battery packs for the SB-80s in order to ensure a faster recycle time and make sure I had enough battery power to make it through an entire set of formals without needing to change batteries.  Although I had tested the battery packs before leaving home and everything was in order, one of the battery packs would not work when I arrived at the church.  It finally started working after I reseated the battery holder in the pack several times.  I've NEVER had any issues with my Lumedyne battery pack I was planning to use during the processional and for the other two flashes during the formals. Lesson learned:  There's a reason pro wedding photographers are willing to spend $350 for an external battery pack...

Setting up the flashes in the umbrellas entailed mounting the two flashes (per umbrella) on the brackets, connecting three cords per flash (two for the external battery packs and one for the radio remote), and then systematically testing all the connections by cycling through the flashes while firing test shots using the radio remote.  All the flashes, battery packs, two remote receivers and remote flash trigger tested successfully during my setup; however, the setup, testing, troubleshooting, testing again and setting my flash ratios/exposures took me about an hour to complete.  I need to simplify my setup (more about that later).  After the ceremony I pulled the flash umbrellas out from the back hall and tested my exposures again.  All was good.  

As we moved the first group of formals up to the altar, my radio trigger for the flashes came unplugged from the sync cord connected to the camera and fell to the ground.  I reconnected the flash trigger and tested it using the "test" button on top of the trigger.  All was well...or so I thought.  When I took a test shot as Rebecca was setting up the first group the remote flashes didn't fire.  Uh oh...  I tested using the test button and they fired successfully.  I tested through the sync connection on the camera and they didn't fire.  I tested plugged into the hotshoe on the camera and the flash fired, but then I needed to connect another remote to my on-camera (fill) flash, since it was no longer connected to the hot shoe.  Now I've got a group of the bride's family on the steps in front of the altar, wincing every time I test the flash, and wondering when I'm going to quit messing with my equipment and take their pictures.  The remote receiver I added is dangling from my on-camera flash and when it accidentally touches the flash bracket the resulting static charge sets of a quick series of flashes.  I try reconnecting the on-camera flash to the hot shoe and connecting the remote transmitter to the sync port in the flash.  It seems to work but my exposures are off.  I'm not sure the sync timing is working correctly with the transmitter plugged into the flash synch port instead of the camera.  I take a few shots that way, then the remote transmitter comes unplugged (it's dangling from the side of the flash) and crashes to the ground again.  When I reconnect it and try another test shot, the flashes don't fire.  In the meantime, Rebecca is trying to help me get the right people up in front of the altar for their "formals" while I'm distracted trying to test the flash.  And the bride finally decides to weigh in on the shot list, and wants to add aunts and uncles to the picture, and where are the grandparents?  Somebody go find the grandparents!  I finally switch over to the optical trigger on the remote flashes.  My "pre-flash" on the camera flash sets them off prematurely so my exposures are off.  I switch to manual for my on-camera flash and mess with the power level.  I finally get my on-camera flash set to a decent level (the group of people at the altar are wondering why I need six shots of the same group, and can I please get on with the rest of the formals).  The point and shoot photographers behind me are randomly setting off the optical triggers on my umbrella mounted flashes, and now the people at the altar are really starting to sense that something is seriously wrong.  And I can feel beads of sweat starting to roll down my forehead.  The sweat drips into my eye, stings like hell and now I can't see!  Damn, where's Rebecca when I need her to get the people at the altar organized!  (Looking for the grandparents of course.)  

I walk over to the remote flashes, turn them off and go to "Plan B," shooting the formals with a single on-camera flash.  I have plenty of flash power available with the on-camera flash, but can't turn it any higher or I will blow out the bride's dress.  Since the wedding group is about the same distance away (or further) from the background as I am from them, physics dictates that the light on the background is about two stops less than the light on the group at about half that distance, so the background will look very dark.  (Inverse squared law and all that physics stuff says that I need four times the flash power to get the same amount of light on an object at double the distance.  That's equivalent to two stops difference between a foreground at 10 feet from the flash and a background at 20 feet from the flash.)  The only way to balance the light on the background is to move the flash farther away from the group (which I can't do because I'm now shooting with on-camera flash), or pull up the ambient exposures by raising the ISO.   I have to bump my ISOs way up to ISO 1250 to get enough ambient light on the background so that it doesn't look like the wedding party is standing in a dark tunnel. Thank goodness the D3 gives me the latitude to shoot at ISO 1250 and still pull useable images from the files.  But pulling so much ambient light into the scene introduces it's own set of problems.  The white balance is all over the place.  Where light from the flash dominates the scene, the light is cooler, but where incandescent/fluorescent lights dominate (the parts of the wedding dress that reflect the room lights) the white balance is significantly warmer, and more greenish.  Getting an "acceptable" white balance in post processing is much more complicated when shooting under such mixed lighting, and it tends to vary from scene to scene.  I'm paying for "Plan B" with significantly more time spent processing on the computer.  But at least I was able to get through the formals and will be able to pull out reasonably good images.  The bride and groom and parents will all be pleased with the results, and will soon forget about all the random flashes and how beads of sweat were rolling down into my eyes during the formals.  And I'm starting to budget for a simpler and more robust flash setup for the "paying" wedding we are scheduled to photograph next Spring.

Lesson Learned:  There's a reason pro wedding photographers pay $400 for a set of radio flash triggers.  Even though I had a spare set of flash triggers and receivers in my bag, they operate on a different frequency than the set I was using, and I wasn't prepared for the complexity of switching those transmitter/receivers out mid-stream, with an anxious wedding parting waiting in front of the altar.  (Next time I will have a complete backup set of lights (and triggers) set up, tested and ready to switch out if needed.)  It wasn't until I returned to the hotel at 1 AM (following the reception) that I was able to take apart the transmitter and see that a wire had come loose.  That's why the "test" button continued to work properly but the flash wouldn't fire correctly from the sync port.  While I was gingerly examining the insides of my cheap ebay radio flash trigger, a second wire came loose.  There's a reason pro wedding photographers pay $400 for a set of reliable radio flash triggers...

Lots more (less dramatic) lessons learned to come, but now I need to get back to the real work of editing the images from the wedding.

[Michele]

YOU ARE A HERO!  Wow, I think after that experience, in my car, I would have cried!!!!  All that work put into the lights and still ending up using one flash! 

You know, I looked on my flash, after reading this story, (the new flash I bought), turns out that the 480EX can NOT have a battery pack attached.  Terrific...

My stomach was in knots reading your story!  Really.  It was funny because of how you wrote it, but I felt sick just thinking about it.  Uhhhg!  Not a fun moment for you and still keeping it together.  Thank you so much for writing this, I am going to read it a lot before attempting stuff.

I think both of you are such a great team!!!

[keithsnell]

Well I have to admit there was a moment when I was still messing with the flash equipment that I thought "I am NEVER going to do this again!"  But after I moved to "Plan B" and got my exposures to a useable setting, things settled down a bit and we got through the formals in the church.  The bride and groom were both fantastic to work with, and the wedding party was a lot of fun, so I was soon smiling again.  Rebecca was a tremendous help, and probably the only reason that things didn't completely fall apart at one point.

And it was a fantastic series of lessons for our next wedding.  On the long drive home from Wisconsin Rebecca and I talked how we might do things differently for the next wedding we photograph.  We actually took a short detour on our trip to stop by the church in Kansas City that we will be photographing in next Spring.  The stop was well worth our time.  The church is beautiful!  So I'm starting to really look forward to photographing the next wedding.  The woman we talked to at the church gave us a nice tour and was very friendly and helpful and answered all the questions we had about the church rules for photographing a wedding.  (There's no photography allowed at all in the sanctuary during the ceremony, but we can shoot from the balcony so I will probably use our 200 - 400mm f4 lens to shoot the ceremony.  How fun is that!)

Messing with the lights during this wedding really started me thinking about how I could set up a "fool proof" setup for my lights, so I'll probably talk a bit more about that later in this thread.

Keith

[keithsnell]

While its still on my mind I wanted to expand a bit more on my comments about "light falloff to the background" and establishing a "fool proof" light setup for photographing weddings.  

Again, probably a little context is in order.  For typical portrait photography your fill light is just that, a rather unimportant light that is just used to fill in the dark shadows caused by your main "key" light.  The placement, light quality and intensity of your key light is what gives 3-dimensional quality to your images, flatters your subject and separates a professional presentation from a less professional one.  Depending on the situation, sometimes a separate light is required to light the background (and maybe a hair light to separate the subject from the background).  Because of this, I've always been much more concerned about my key light for wedding formals, and less concerned about the fill light.  

However, when reading advice about how to best set up lights to photograph group formals, I've come across advice from seasoned professionals recommending the use of a single or two light setup that is "straight on" in order to provide even lighting across the group.  There are other proponents of "feathering" your key light across the group to even out the illumination.  "Feathering" can work with an umbrella because the light falls off gradually from the center of the umbrella to the edges.  You can take advantage of this effect by setting your umbrella about 10 feet to one side of the camera and aiming it across to the far side of the group.  The bright center of the umbrella will be aimed at the person furthest away, and the people closest to the light will be on the feathered edge of the light where it is the weakest.  Works great in theory, but requires precise placement and aiming of the umbrella, and the placement/aim might need to be adjusted as your group size changes.  Still, I've always been predisposed to use the key light in this manner, since my goal is to present the most flattering rendition of my subject (I want the 3-d modeling affect from the key light).  However, this setup also requires delicate balancing between the key and fill light, as well as the use of a background light to compensate for the light falloff.  It takes time to set up, balance and test the lights, and when something goes wrong (say your radio remote goes out for instance) it can be very difficult to recover.

In this case, the proponents of using a light "straight on" (high and directly behind the photographer) win out.  If something happens to disable that light, you simply swap it out with your "spare" sitting on standby in the corner.  Using your main light high and behind the photographer can also be used to address the need for a background light.  Let me explain.  As I mentioned earlier in the thread, if my light is 10 feet from my subject and my subject is 10 feet in front of the background (typical for most church altar settings) then there will be a 2-stop drop in light between the subject and the background.  (I have to increase the power of my lights by two stops in order to double the effective range.)  This results in the dreaded "black tunnel" effect.  I can even out the light on the subjects and background by moving my main light further back.  If I place my main light 20 feet back from the group (and the distance from them to the background is still 10 feet) then the drop in light intensity between the group and the background is only one stop.  While a two stop difference is difficult to handle in post processing, a one stop difference is very manageable.  Given powerful enough lights (and a tall enough light stand) I could move my main light back even farther, say 25 to 30 feet, and the light falloff would be minimized to the extent that it would no longer be a concern.

So, given my desire to come up with a "fool proof" and less failure prone setup for my wedding formals, I plan to transition to using a main light up high and behind the position I'm photographing from.  Notice I called this light a "main" light and not a "key" light.  Because the light is firing straight on, and providing very little modeling on the subject, it is still a "fill" light.  But it will now be my "main" light.  I still plan to provide just a touch of modeling by including a relatively weak key light feathered across the group.  But because most of my light is coming from the "main" light behind me, the key light won't be as critical as in my previous setup.  It will provide a touch of 3-d modeling and shadow transitions, but if it fails (or it's aim is a little off) I will still get perfectly acceptable formals (and probably still a bit better than your "average" formals).  By placing the main light further back from the group, I'll also eliminate my need for a background light.  

Remember that during this past wedding I was forced to bump up my ISO in order to use ambient light to bring the background up out of the shadows.  This introduced it's own set of problems since the mix of ambient and flash resulted in white balance issues.  It's not just a matter of a shift in white balance, but also an issue because shadows will have different white balance than highlights, and the white balance will shift as the distance from the flash changes.  (For example the white balance will be different between the bride and groom in the center of the group and the person in the wedding party at the far end of the group.)  It is much better to reduce the "contamination" from ambient light by attempting to light the scene totally with flash and eliminate as much ambient light from the exposure as possible.  You can do this if you have a powerful enough main light and you can set it far enough back from the group that it will also serve as a background light.  Two speedlights bounced in an umbrella should provide (just barely) enough power to set your lights back about 25ft, but you will be firing at full power and will need external battery packs for the speedlights in order to ensure a fast recycle time and enough battery reserves so that you don't have to switch out batteries in the middle of the formals.  Even better still would be something like these Einstein lights, with this external battery pack so that I don't have to worry about finding an outlet and stringing extension cords in the church.  Don't tell Rebecca but next year's budget will include an Einstein strobe and battery pack, and one set of our speedlights will become our backup "main" light.  That also simplifies my setup and testing, with only two connections to worry about (power and sync) instead of the seven connections with my previous dual speedlight setup.  Maybe not quite "fool proof" but definitely more failure resistant.   Oh, and the Einstein lights output a calibrated and consistent 5600K color temperature across their power range.  HOW SWEET IS THAT!  I can set my white balance at 5600K at the beginning of the formals and never have to adjust white balance again!  Heaven!!  (Well, and then there's the matter of that unreliable radio remote.   )

OK, time for me to get back to processing wedding images.

Keith

[keithsnell]

With all of my gloom and doom discussion about my lights (flash trigger) failing on me, I can only imagine that some people are thinking "oh, that poor bride.  Keith and Rebecca ruined her wedding day."  Well not really, it's just that the formals didn't come out quite as nice as I was hoping for.  Hard direct light is never as flattering as soft directional light from an umbrella or softbox.  To give you an example of how the formals did come out, here's a sample:

Bride, Groom, Ring Bearer and Flower Girl

There are a few hard shadows that I don't like, the exposure is a bit more uneven top to bottom than what I would like, and there's a slight white balance shift front to back (between the faces of the children and the bride and groom).  At that point, I have to compromise on a white balance setting that is halfway between the two, instead of getting both sets of faces looking nice.  (By the way, the bride's dress and grooms tux were off-white (more cream colored) as shown in these images.  And please make sure you are looking at the image in Safari so the colors will display correctly.  This image looks horrible in Internet Explorer, which can't display the colors correctly.)

I recognize that I am much more critical than the bride and groom will ever be, and I think they'll like the pictures just fine.

[Michele]

Amazing.  Thank you for all of this!!!  Again, gold!

Keep it coming...  I am drinking it in.

[keithsnell]

Stlll slogging through the image editing from the wedding.  I thought I'd post another spontaneous shot as the wedding party waives at passing cars that are honking to help celebrate the wedding.  Almost time for the reception...

Just Married!

[keithsnell]

And another fun one from the same location:

Having fun with the Bride

[Michele]

THEY ARE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

[keithsnell]

Thank you. 

With the exception of the flash fiasco for the formals in the church, I think the day went well.  And it was a great opportunity to learn.  As I'm editing the images, I'm also looking for ways that we can do better next time.  I definitely want to try for more consistent white balance next time, by better controlling the mixed lighting.  There were several scenes in the church where the mix of flash and incandescent/fluorescent lighting made it difficult to compromise on a pleasing white balance.  I'll post an example later, along with a description of how I think I might handle the situation better next time.

[Chris]

Downloading safari now. 
Looking forward to reading about the white balance. I recently had trouble in a room with huge windows on one side of the room, very bright fluorecents on one end of the room and incandesecent on the other end. I never did get it right. I got some that were ok but some had weird colors, like blue faces.

[Chris]

Well, I took a look at it in Safari. I could tell a difference but it was minor. I suppose that would be due to the cheap display on my low end laptop that isn't calibrated. It could also be that my glasses are broken and the new ones haven't come in yet so I'm wearing sunglasses right now.

[keithsnell]

Here's an example of the "mixed lighting" in the church:

Mostly Ambient Light, ISO 2500, F3.5, 1/100 sec

You can see in this first image that the light on the bride and groom is primarily from the flash, and the light on the wedding party at the front of the church is primarily ambient light.  There's a big shift in white balance between the foreground and background, and that makes it difficult for the camera to pick an "accurate" white balance, and a challenge to choose a decent compromise after the fact.  (Actually the camera did a fairly decent job for this particular shot, since I ended up going with the recorded white balance as my "compromise." )


The next image was shot earlier during the processional, and is weighted more towards the flash.  (The ambient exposure is 2.7 stops less than in the first image.  (-2/3 stop due to ISO, -2.3 stops due to aperture, +1/3 stop due to shutter speed).)  Although the background is darker in the processional image, I don't think it detracts too much from the image, especially since that view of the church isn't very attractive, and the darker background helps to hide that distracting photographer in the balcony.  

Mostly Flash, ISO 1600, F8, 1/60 sec

Because the light in the second image is primarily from the flash, and a consistent color temperature, the colors are much "cleaner" and the white balance is much more accurate.  Look at the colors of the carpet in this image and then compare them to the first image with the mixed lighting.  Notice how the colors in the mixed lighting are "dingier" and much less accurate?  That's what happens under mixed lighting, and if your bride has spend a lot of time choosing the colors for the wedding (the bridesmaids dresses, etc.,) she wants them to look right!  (That's one reason I'm not very happy with the formals in the church, where my flash issues led to my raising the ISO and mixing ambient light with flash.  The colors just aren't as accurate, and it is tough to get the purple bridesmaids dresses looking accurate under that mixed lighting.  My compromise is to adjust for the skin tones, and let the dress color "fall where it  may.")

Here's the same couple leaving the church, with the exposure more biased toward the ambient light and therefore under "mixed lighting":

Mostly Ambient Light, ISO 2500, F3.5, 1/100 sec

I'm still struggling with the white balance on this one, and so far the best compromise is to "click balance" on the collar of the groom's white shirt.  (Notice the shift in colors in the bridesmaid's dress, and the carpet.)   I should have dropped the ISO for this shot, and based the exposure primarily on light from the flash.

That said, I wanted the wedding party to be shown as part of the background in the first image of the bride and groom leaving the church, so I was pretty much forced to use a high ISO (and shoot under mixed lighting) in order to get the shot I wanted.  Still, it should be a conscious decision that comes with a recognition of the potential drawbacks of shooting under mixed lighting.  Hopefully all this makes sense...

Keith

[keithsnell]

Ok, I had to post this image, just because it makes me smile:

Evan and Kyla

[Michele]

It's the one I like best.  Thank you for posting it!

They are amazing photos!  Man, these guys were lucky to have the both of you!