PWacademy: Wedding Photography workshops (Aug 09) Part 1

Over the past five days I have been running my wedding photography courses both for the RPS and mine, with a great bunch of delegates producing some fantastic images. The primary element they all wanted to learn was how to use their flashguns both correctly and creatively, and the general comments after the course were “ well I never thought I could do that – that has really opened my eyes”.

The first 2 day course was for the RPS with 15 delegates, however this course does not include the shots inside the Church, as well as only being 3 shoots and not 4 as on my 2 day portfolio course.

After an initial introduction, and a what’s in the bag session, we started getting to grips with the flashgun. I provided instruction on how to control the flash output either through ETTL (canon) and flash compensation or working with the flashgun on the manual settings. I went on to demonstrate how you can control the ambient light with the shutter.

After a very brief demonstration we went outside to start creating some bridal shots with delightful Katie (she is my daughter so I am biased). However I will not be able to use her shortly as she told us the other week that she was pregnant, I am not sure how Mark her Husband will feel about using Katie for a shotgun wedding shoot!

This first image was shot with just 1 speedlite un-modified and you can see the hard shadow it has created. The ambient lighting was rather flat and so I wanted to use the flash as the main light.

This first set up was against an old barn type door that was more than likely used by Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the negative positive process, as he lived in the adjacent Abbey in Lacock at the time. The first shot I set up was using a single speed-light, and at the same time demonstrated the use of a light meter. It never ceases to amaze me how creative you can be with just 1one light, despite all the electronic triggers suddenly stopped working all at once. Henry was upset I think so after a few kind words to him they all started again.

I used the speed-light unmodified (no soft box or umbrella) to demonstrate the edgy light that I personally like, however we did move on to using a shoot through umbrella to produce a much softer light. The use of an umbrella is brilliant on location it is light and easy to carry, however does need either a “voice activated light stand” or a sandbag to hold in down in the lightest of winds.

Here I went for a much softer feel to the image and shot this one with a shoot through umbrella.

The general rule is the smaller the light source the harder the light will be, a larger light source will be softer.

This is the RPS course, with 15 delegates and 15 wellington boots.

When shooting outside, with off-camera flash, I first need to take an ambient light reading, as that is what I will be balancing my flash to. The reading is an incident reading, unlike the reflected reading through the camera which I often use when shooting a wedding, however care is needed when taking “in camera” meter readings, say at a wedding, due to the fact that they are reflected light readings, so I tend to take an evaluative reading as opposed to spot readings to prevent either under exposure if the reading was taken from the dress or overexposure if the reading is form the suit.

The advantage of getting into the ford was the ability to get images like this, with Mark the groom in the background.

This again was a shot from the ford but with the flash zoomed to 105mm to vignette the light.

Once I have my ambient reading I then make the creative choice for the flash, do I want it as a fill or the main light. Once I have made this decision I will then set the flash manually to the desired output.