Wedding Photography Gallery - Image 25

Canon EOS 5D - 1/4th/sec - F9 - ISO 320 - Manual - Natural

The reception and dance photos are probably the most difficult to shoot with regards to lighting the people and keeping it looking natural...well, I find it difficult anyway!

You need to try and capture the moments as they looked and not as they were recorded. What I mean is, if you use direct flash and an automatic setting for everything, you will get white and boring, although well exposed, lighting on your subjects with a generally dark background.

The background will look quite lacklustre and dull and not really give the onlooker an idea of how it was.

At most wedding receptions, there are normally colourful lights all around which you need to try and capture to create the ambience that existed on the night.

For this image, I was tying a new technique whereby I would set the camera to manual, set a long shutter speed of around ¼ to ½ a second, an aperture of f8 or f9 and the speedlight to E-TTL or auto.

By doing this, the slow shutter speed is allowing the colours of the lights to "burn in" to the image, albeit blurry (which gives a feeling of movement), and the speedlight or flash will capture and freeze the subjects nicely.

It is worth taking quite a few as it can be a bit of a "lottery" as to what you get but I though this one, taken on the dance floor, looked like the couple were dancing in the street at night.

Lens 24-70 2.8 L at 24mm

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