Comments on: 5 Reasons to use off-camera Flash at Receptions

By: jason huang

jason huang — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:39:33 +0000

awesome awesome article! new ways to use light = win!

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:33:38 +0000

Thanks for the reads and comments y’all. Makes the effort in writing posts like this worth while

G.E.: I’m not waiting till the couple looks directly into the flash to fire. It’s about peak emotion and moment as always, and often during these moments they’re not looking at the flash. Also note we’re using 2-3 ND filters on top of firing at minimum power, so the flash power is super low. In short: no complaints so far.

Kate: iTTL will often blow out, especially when underexposing ambient. That’s why we shoot manual flash for most of our work. Wish high-speed sync worked in manual mode, so guess I should add that to the list above

Happy Flashing!

By: Kate Miller

Kate Miller — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:27:13 +0000

Dave, this is good stuff. I’ve been using my flashes off camera in ittl and I find that they are waaay to overpowering at times. I bring an assistant to hold the flash on a stick and follow me around the floor.

HonlPhoto has lots of light modifiers for speedlights and I’m thinking about trying some out to keep the light from spreading everywhere. Maybe in combination with a couple stops of ND?

Do you have trouble focusing in the low-light? My AF assit illuminator never seems to help and I have missed a couple of great shots because of this problem. I’ve heard of other photographers using video lights to correct this, but then there goes the beauty of lighting off camera…

By: johnlo

johnlo — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:58:19 +0000

this post has been so inspirating to read. Just wanted to say Thank You for writing it. I think I have read it like 10 times.. most of them are right before a shoot.

By: Raul Kling

Raul Kling — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:55:32 +0000

Excellent article. I totally agree with everything you shared. Off camera flash is the way to go. Photography, after all, means “painting with light”. Painting doesn’t mean splashing-the-subject-with-direct-light, but adding a stroke here, and a stroke there, creating thus the image you foresaw in your mind. How cool is it when you can do the same at a wedding reception.

By: Philip Smith

Philip Smith — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:41:34 +0000

Great article. I’ve only just started lighting with of camera, but look forward to trying out some on the ideas I’ve got from here. Thanks.

By: Ian W

Ian W — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:48:02 +0000

There’s a couple of nice with-flash shots here, but for many of the pairs I like, or even prefer, the straight ambient shot. I certainly wouldn’t suggest abandoning ambient shooting, and indeed a *wink* of fill might help some of those.

By: photografika

photografika — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:54:10 +0000

Super article, thank you for sharing Michael!

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:31:57 +0000

Only if they’re cheap enough that I can buy 5-10!

By: G.E. Masana

G.E. Masana — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:26:42 +0000

A good report about the lost art of accent lighting at venues. Very cool stuff. Though I wonder if brides and grooms may b!tch a bit afterwards about that placement of a strobe on their dais that kept blinding them throughout the night (as in your last photo).

Other than that, and not to take away from it in the least, what I found very notable and so rare, which makes it therefore deserving of praise, was your correct spelling of “heh heh”.