find the light and match the light

photography begins and ends with light

this particular blog post is personal: it comes from a place of struggle, frustration, hard work, calling my friends on the phone after many weddings and belly aching about how much i hated my work, and from a place of never giving up.

you want to be a better photographer? learn to light! study it, practice with it and master it. n.b. mastering light like is akin to life, it is a journey, it is a continuous life long process. there are many nuances to lighting and on your journey you get an understanding of basics and then the advanced. however, there is always much more to learn.

with portrait and wedding photography for the most part, light the face. when viewing a photograph our eyes are drawn to the lightest part of a photograph and you want the eyes to be drawn to the subject's face.

most people who say "i am a natural light photographer" is generally code words for i haven't yet practiced and mastered flash, other color lights, mixed light situations, and light sources other than outdoors.

nevertheless, these rules aren't written in stone, they are some basic rules:

find the light 

speckled light

• in wedding reception photography, set the stage and let the actors walk on to it.  i shoot receptions using both on and off camera flash at the same time, as well as separately. find a sweet spot where the off camera light is just spot on and hits your subject beautifully and let them walk into that spot and photograph them.

• outdoors

open shade

1. backlight. always turn their backs to the sun or you will end up with harsh shadows and squinting eyes. 
2. open shade you absolutely cannot screw this up, this light is gorgeous. do not confuse the shade of a tree as open shade, many trees create speckled light (bright spots and shadows) open shade results from the side of a building, an under path etc. it is one soft light across the body
3. window light: use it to your advantage, its free and gorgeous like open shade.

• indoors

1. in wedding photography, keep lighting as simple as possible because of time constraints. therefore, maximize the use of room lights. use it to light the face.
2. if there isn't any light, use a video light, use flash, a room light

match the light

use of room light, to light the face 

i can't tell you how many photographs i have seen ruined because of the in ability to match the light by myself and by second shooters who have worked for me. when the light is one temperature through out the room, most cameras do a good job of matching the light by the use of auto white balance. i don't trust it. i custom white balance all the time, with practice, it takes about 30 seconds to custom white balance and note you can use almost anything to do so, from placing cheap tissue paper over your $1600 lens or the expensive,  expodisk or the cheap whiteblance caps . it dosen't matter, white balance even when the light is consistent. i custom wb for window light, and in open shade and as well as when using room lights.

for receptions i gel my flash to match the the room temp, if i need to add a flash or video light i gel them too match the temperature of the light.  and set my camera to the preset temperature. take for example if the light if the reception hall is tungsten. i set my camera to tungsten, gel the flash using a CTO gel and then shoot.
if you don't match the camera and flash to the the room light's temperature you will have awful colors that cannot be corrected in post.

the goal is to always get the skin tones as close to as they look in real life by matching the light.

keep kewl!