jon phillips

I had the pleasure of shooting Sunny and Walt’s wedding on Halloween this year.  You can view more images from the set here.  I wanted to share this photo and the setup information behind it.  I was shooting the formals on the back deck of their pastor’s house and trying to come up with something a little different.  They already had the masks, so I can’t take credit for that.  It had been raining and we were kind of limited to that little area which was somewhat dry at the moment.  So we did a string of shots with the exposure closed down to f/11 to darken the sky and my flash was at full power to get a more dramatic effect.  It just made sense considering it was Halloween, rainy, and they had those cool masks.

Setup info:  F/11 at ISO 100.  Nikon SB-25 at full power with 43″ shoot thru umbrella camera right. I was literally laying on the ground to get the sky as much as I could in the background.

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.