jon phillips

The reception has always been my favorite part of the wedding day to shoot because everybody has had a chance to relax, get some food, and start having fun.  They’ve made it through the most stressful time of the day and its good times for everyone.  I typically will try to set up at least one strobe on a light stand somewhere outside the perimeter of the dance floor and I will move around trying to get different angles and because people are moving so much on the dance floor, you will get different looks. I will go out and take a couple of test exposures and adjust accordingly and then start shooting.  Work the angle of the lighting; that means, you need to move around so that you’re shooting with the light to the right, to the left, or sometimes back into the light.

In this shot, the light was behind the girls in the corner, producing a rim light.  It was pretty dark so I was shooting at ISO 1600.  You also have to watch your recycle times so you don’t miss a shot.  This was my favorite from the night.

This is what you get when you want to play around with a new snoot you made out of an old cereal box. You can build a decent snoot out of a lucky charms box and some duct tape. I’ll be posting soon about making snoots out of that foam paper from the craft store.

Strobist info: Vivitar 285 with homemade snoot camera left at 1/2 power. I had the lightstand as high as it would go, probably 7 feet high pointed almost straight down.