When photographers first jump into wedding photography, they usually struggle when it comes to lighting receptions.
Wedding receptions happen in many types of environments and timelines are typically tight, all of which makes shooting these events all the more challenging.
You need to know what gear to use, how to set it up, and how to actually use it to create amazing imagery, no matter the circumstances.
In this tutorial, we’ll share our five favorite lighting techniques when it comes to shooting wedding receptions.
Here are the modifiers featured in this video/article:
For the first scenario, we’ll shoot outdoors in a dark environment. This happens often for receptions. Shooting in this environment is especially tricky because we don’t typically have anything to bounce light off of. So, what do we do?
While your first instinct might be to go with direct flash using an on-camera flash, we would recommend against it.
Direct flash works in some scenarios, but it’s less than ideal for receptions or weddings in general.
The harsh shadows and lighting that result from direct flash are not very flattering when it comes to photographing people.
Instead, start by dialing in your ambient light in-camera. Use the following settings as a starting point:
The goal here is to make sure that you preserve some of the environmental ambient light (see the image above).
If you were to rely solely on the flash to light the entire scene, you’d lose the ambiance of that scene.
Because this particular scene was extremely dark, we had to bump the ISO up to 6400. Luckily, with today’s cameras, this high ISO setting will still yield great results.
Next, you'll point the flash upwards and place a MagBounce 2 on the flash to bounce the light forward. Using this modifier will allow some of our light to go up and bounce around the room, but most of the light moves forward, giving you much more coverage than you’d get using only direct flash.
The lighting looks so much better with the MagBounce than it does using direct flash. The bounced light looks quite a bit softer and a little bit more diffused.
Let’s look at another example.
In the scene above, the reception hall features a tapestry painted blue with light. If we were to bounce light in this room, we’d get a lot of blue light bouncing back onto our subjects. To counter this effect, we need to push some light forward, and that’s where the MagBounce shines.
The MagBounce cleans up the face of our subject nicely, despite how the blue ambient light fills the room. Again, we get a bit of bounce, and a lot of light pushed forward to cover a much larger area.
This next technique focuses on directional light, and it works really well for speeches, toasts, or performances, all of which are staples at wedding receptions. In this indoor scenario, we will have a ceiling that we can use to bounce light off of.
Given this scenario, we’d typically place a flash on our camera, point it up, and place a CTO gel (to help us correct the white balance - more on that later) and either a MagBounce or MagSphere 2 on the flash.
Using this setup will render pretty decent results. The light bounces around and fills the area, but it can also kind of wash out the natural color in the room.
If we take our flash off of the camera and use directional light, however, we can get results like these:
Taking the flash off-camera allows you to not only move around more freely, but also get much more dynamic images. Now, we can actually capture the scene and all the ambient light within that scene.
So how do you set it up?
First, we need to place an off-camera flash onto a MagShoe and then onto a light stand. We prefer using Manfrotto Nano stands because they’re small, light, and highly portable, but use whatever you like.
In addition to getting the light placement right, the magic with this technique rests in light control. For this reason, you’ll need to place a grid (preferably a MagGrid 2) on your flash as well.
Here are a couple of setups for using this directional light technique.
So, imagine we're looking top down on a dance floor (see the graph above), and we’ve placed our subjects in the center. In this scenario, we’d place a grid on our flash to control light spill and then light the couple from one of the corners of the dance floor (figure “B” in the graph above).
Once your light is set up, you will shoot from the opposite side of the couple (following the paths outlined for Figure “A”), or what we call the “shadow side.”
Otherwise, if you stand too close to the light source, it will just look like you used direct flash.
Here’s another example, this time using performances.
To capture the image above, we’ve placed our gridded flash on the corner of the dance floor, to camera right, to light the group. You can use more than one flash, but be sure to grid each one. You don't want light to spill everywhere into the scene.
The entire scene took place on an outdoor deck of a ship in San Diego. Because we were outside, we had nothing to bounce the light off.
To give us the light we needed, we placed our gridded flash camera right, just behind the video light you can see in the frame.
Another flash, placed camera left, is creating a rim light on the subject.
We shot from the shadow side, or the darker side, and these images were the result.
With this lighting setup, we’re free to move around and shoot the scene from different angles, all with consistent lighting.
We can move in closer to capture expressions during a toast, or we can shoot wider to capture a full performance.
Use this setup to free yourself from having to always shoot front and center.
Now, it’s time to talk about capturing the correct color, or white balance, in-camera. To do this, we're going to use MagGels.
When you shoot scenes like the one above, you’ll find there’s a lot of orange and warmth that naturally occurs in the scene.
If you use just regular flash (with a daylight white balance), you’ll get mixed lighting with warm ambient light and a cooler temp from the flash.
It can quickly become difficult to match color in post, and you’ll likely end up with muddy orange tones.
In the example above, however, we actually used a full CTO gel to match the ambient room light. If the ambient light is kind of orange, use the half CTO. If it's really orange, then use the full.
Either way, place a CTO gel right onto your on-camera flash and then set your in-camera white balance to around 3600 to 3800 Kelvin.
Once you’re in Lightroom (or whichever editing software you use), click on the white balance selector and select any neutral color in the scene to quickly get to a really nice white balance.
Notice how the colors in the “After” shot above are not really muddy or mixed. Everything matches.
Here are some other examples of images captured using a MagSphere and a CTO gel. We love the MagSphere because the sphere lets most of light travel up and bounce off the ceiling. At the same time, it also pushes some of the light towards our subject as well.
For this technique, we’re going to take the flash off-camera again. Place it on a MagShoe and light stand, and use it to backlight your subjects. We’re going to place CTO gel on the flash to create a warmer backlight, and then stack it with either a MagSphere or a MagGrid, depending on the end result we’re looking for. We’ll cover both below.
When you want to wrap your subjects in light, remove the grid and go with the MagSphere.
Next, place the flash directly behind your subjects and position it low enough so that it only slightly points up towards your subjects.
If your subjects are wearing white, point the flash towards the white clothing to bounce more light off of the clothing. We go more into this technique in this tutorial for 5 easy OCF portraits for any wedding.
You can use this technique virtually anywhere and get absolutely wonderful results. For example, we captured the image above in a parking lot.
If you don't want the light to wrap around your subjects, then remove the MagSphere and pop a MagGrid on the flash. Next, place the flash directly behind your couple, just like before, somewhere between 5 to 10 feet away.
In the image above, the grid on our backlight helps prevent the light from spilling and killing the entire scene. It pushes the light forward, and the CTO gel gives us a bit of warmth, resulting in a dynamic shot that draws attention to our subjects and retains the ambient light of the scene.
For this technique, take the MagShoe off the stand. Use a MagGel to color match, like we discussed earlier.
Next, you’ll use one hand to hold and operate your camera and the other hand to hold the flash high up, aimed at your subjects.
We have a couple of different variations for this set up, and each yields different results.
For the first variation, we used a MagSphere to push light everywhere. Using the Statue of Liberty technique with these modifiers, we notice a little bit of a highlight on our subject, which we can further control using the zoom feature on our flash.
In this example, everybody around our bride is lit up, and it looks really nice. However, we can still funnel the light a bit more.
For this second variation, we’ve started our layering with a CTO Gel, a MagGrid, and then a MagSphere. This reduces the lightspill and focuses more of the light onto specific subjects.
This variation takes the light control a step further and removes the MagSphere for very focused lighting. Use this variation when you want all the light to fall directly on your subjects.
One little trick to use with this technique is to use the flash’s modeling light. Most modern flashes include this built-in feature. T
he only downside to using this trick is that when you shine a modeling light in someone’s face, it's very noticeable, especially in a dark environment.
As a result, sometimes the people you’re trying to capture in a candid moment stop and look into the camera, and they start to pose for a picture.
That’s not what we’re generally after here. For this reason, once you get used to using the technique, try to keep the modeling light off.
The image above uses the Statue of Liberty technique with the MagSphere and a CTO gel. This technique lets you get the camera and the light away from your body, which gives you extra height. It provides a really fantastic way of lighting dance floor photos.
We hope you found these 5 favorite lighting techniques for wedding receptions helpful. With a bit of practice, you should be able to quickly employ these techniques to get the shot you’re after without wasting any time or missing any moments.
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