Original subtitles

Receptions.

Here we go.

Everybody's going inside now.

And from this point on, Eric and I

are basically off camera flash for the rest

of the night, unless it happens to be

maybe an outdoor venue or the sun's still

up and it's spilling into the tent.

We might shoot ambient light until the sun's

down, but then it's off camera flash for

the rest of the night.

And we will actually save a little time

at this part of the day to do

some detail shots.

It's, it's not normal for us to do

detail shots during the rest of the day,

but we feel like there's a ton of

effort in either do it yourself details or

if they've hired a wedding planner for the

centerpieces and the flowers and the, and the

plates and the coloring, all that sort of

stuff.

So we'll set aside five or 10 minutes

to do the detail shots.

If it's a wedding with an exceptional amount

of details where they've hired a wedding planner

and they've paid, you know, thousands of dollars

for the decor, we'll bring an assistant along

just to take care of the detail shots

so that we don't have to worry about

it.

That being said, if we are doing the

detail shots, we don't pour a ton of

creative energy into them.

We use a 50 or 35 usually wide

open and just show what it looks like.

Yeah.

Get those details.

And then for the reception itself, usually the

first thing that we're stressing about is the

grand entrance, right?

I hate the grand entrance.

Like I literally hate photographing the grand entrance,

but nonetheless, this is how we do it.

It's, it's challenging, right?

They're moving and we haven't got our lights

figured out yet.

We haven't got it dialed in for the

night.

So we're yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we usually try and test out our

lighting beforehand, right?

Like we'll figure out what our ambient exposure

is.

We'll, you know, we'll test it out on

Lanny or myself, figure out what our flash

setting should be.

And basically one of us is going to

shoot and one of us is going to

light.

So the lighter is going to hold the

light on a boom or in a monopod

and track the subjects.

And then the shooter is going to fill

the frame with the subjects and try and

track them.

Right.

Yeah.

And it, you know, rarely results in any

award-winning photos.

They're deliverable.

I would say your best bet, if you

are working solo without an assistant would be

either light stand, aim at best guess, um,

or on camera flash.

Yeah.

Okay.

Which we will talk about a little later

when we get into the dance floor.

Yeah.

So then we get into the eating part.

Yeah.

The eating part.

Now, uh, I'm going to go through this.

When I go through my pre-wedding workflow

and how I communicate to this, to the

clients, but it's important that we communicate that

we eat at the same time as they

eat, right?

Because there's no point taking pictures of them

while they're eating.

And that's the best time for us to

eat.

And if they wait to serve our table

last, generally it means we don't eat at

all.

And by that point, we've often been working

13, 14, 15 hours.

So we need to get some calories in

our body and, and our, our clients always

understand this when we address it early.

But if we don't address it, then often

the vendors just assume that we should get

served last.

And then as soon as the speeches start,

we don't touch our food.

So the other thing we try to set

ourselves up for is to be eating in

the same space as everybody else, if possible.

And that's typically the norm in Canada, but

not everywhere.

Sometimes you'll get secluded away and you're eating

in a, you know, a closet off to

the side.

And, and the drawback to that, of course,

is if something happens, you're not there to

catch it.

So we just let them know that the

preference is in their best interest.

Exactly.

To be there in the same space.

Okay.

So we've eaten, speeches are starting.

Now we've got basically three tips for speeches.

And the first tip is to try and

get the speaker and the reactor in the

same frame.

And this is the Holy Grail.

This is what we're always looking, working towards

when we're photographing speeches.

And sometimes it takes us three or four

speeches to figure out where our camera needs

to be in order to layer these two

stories together.

Well, it's not always possible, right?

That's what we're looking for.

And that's our first priority is can we

get them both in the same frame?

But even when we are using that first

tip, one of us is primarily focusing on

the speaker and one of us is primarily

focusing on the reactor, because even if we're

layering those two stories together in one frame,

inevitably it's going to feature the reactor, the

speaker more, depending on what you're focused on.

That's right.

So that's the first tip.

That's the first one.

And these, these three tips generally work and

apply to any wedding at any reception, regardless

of the light, regardless of where the podium

is and where they're sitting.

Right.

These are the three things that we're trying

to, and these are the three things that

guide us in terms of where we go

with our cameras, which lenses we choose and

where we put our light.

Okay.

So speaker and reaction.

If we can't do that, then we do

tip number two, which is fill the frame.

Okay.

With the speaker or the reaction.

With what's interesting with the story, right?

It doesn't mean you can't still layer.

You can layer multiple reactions together, but fill

the frame with what's interesting and eliminate what's

not adding to your story.

And then that determines if you need a

bigger lens, right.

Or a wider lens.

That determines if you need to reposition and

go closer or back up.

Right.

So those two tips.

And then the, and the third one would

be short like that.

That's right.

Short like that.

Short like that shit.

So whatever you're lighting, whether you're lighting the

speaker or the reactor short light, short light

is always so much more flattering than broad

light.

So just to refresh your memory, short lighting

is when you're lighting the side of your

face or the side of your subject's face,

that's furthest away from the camera.

Right.

So with the camera at the angle, it

is right now lighting this part of my

face.

From over there.

So that determines where we put our lights.

Yeah.

Right.

So I can't tell you where we put

our lights with each speech because it depends

on the speaker and the reactor and where

my camera is, but we're always aiming to

short light the faces.

Yeah.

And Eric and I manage our own lights.

We each have our own flash on a

light stand and we're not afraid to move

those lights around until we find the right

position.

Even mid speech, right?

We'll quietly, slowly move over, reposition our light,

re-angle the light to hit our subject

and then go get back in shooting position

and keep tasting the soup and fixing it

until it's just right.

And then once we found that, you know,

the best spot to shoot from and the

exact place for our light to be, then

we'll stick with that for the rest of

the speeches.

Right.

So let's go behind the scenes now and

you can see us shooting speeches in action.

Welcome to Shannon and Ian's reception.

I need to eat.

Do you need to eat?

We've been smelling it all day.

Okay.

So I'm, I'm going to be on channel

three.

Okay.

Okay.

I'll go channel one.

It's nicer if like, it's going to be

hard for us to get back.

Yeah.

So what do you, where is it?

Like if you, if you just put your

chairs in the middle.

So you would have heard me talking to

the bride earlier and this is something we

very rarely do, but because the head table

and the speeches were so far apart from

each other and the bride and groom were

hidden sort of behind the head table way

in the back, we suggested that they pull

their seats out into the middle of the

dance floor here so that we could get

the speaker and the reactor in the same

frame.

Again, something we really rarely do in terms

of asking people to go places for us,

but we thought it was worth it in

this case.

Lanny's going to be focusing on either the

speaker or reactor and I will be focusing

on the other.

So in this case, I'm focusing on the

reactions.

You can see my light set up over

here coming into the side and Lanny's focused

on the speaker here.

Making that little micro adjustments to the flash.

And she thanked me for giving her such

an amazing daughter-in-law.

And I thank her.

And here I'm just really confused because Lanny

and I had just had a conversation that

he was going to photograph the speaker and

I was going to photograph the reaction.

And for some reason he set up his

flash on Shannon and Ian here.

So I'm worried about not getting any pictures

of the mom.

So I'm just telling him here to do

his job.

And I'm saying you can fool around and

do this stuff after you've got some safe

pictures of the mom just speaking.

Then you can go and go and try

some new stuff.

So if this had been like a 30

second speech, we would have been screwed and

that we would have had no pictures of

the mother.

So always try and get those safe shots

right at the beginning of the speech.

And then you can get different perspectives once

you've got those out of the way.

So now I'm going in behind here, which

is where Lanny was going initially.

It's a great place to be with our

camera, but it is important that we stick

to our roles.

Want to feel the warm breeze, sleep under

the palm trees, feel the rush of the

ocean, get on board a fast train, travel

on a jet plane far away.

I'll spread my wings.

And if we were shooting this alone or

if I were shooting this alone, or Lanny

was shooting this alone, I think we'd spend

half the speech focused on the speaker and

half the speech focused on the reactor.

This little girl coming out gave a great

little extra layer to incorporate into the frames.

I got great hard light from this angle

because you can see my light right here.

It's hard lighting the right side of their

faces.

So from this angle, it gives really nice

hard light.

But there are also the, she's independent, tenacious

back to her sister.

The two of them are very, very, very,

very, very, very, very, very, very, very, two

of you have always had each other's backs.

Look down the journey on my own.

So thank you.

And um, Shannon, I'm so happy for you.

I'm so happy that you found the perfect

person to spend your life with Ian.

You guys switched it up.

Now I'm getting the speaker and Lanny's getting

the reactor.

You know, every time I see you guys

more and more, I just know you guys

are meant to be with each other.

Um, you always protect your guys nothing but

happiness together.

And for these hug shots, there's really sort

of two things we can do.

As you can see here, Lanny's holding the

flash for me, but a better thing to

do would actually be if I had just

switched my on camera flash to TTL and

used on camera flash, that's easier.

It's I'm more likely to get nice, even

light.

Um, and just capture those hug shots or

I could go to natural light.

Mom, I don't know what to do.

Um, should I go to acting school or

should I go to science school?

And I remember saying to you, Oh my

God, you have a brain that can do

science.

Go do the science, make your money cause

you can act any old time.

Watch really heinous films that you should all

see called Dead Sushi, which is really bad

and play Japanese music in the background.

So taking the Monday and we all get

a chance to get together and enjoy a

beautiful place with warm weather.

If you live in the Northeast or anywhere

else in Northern Europe, it is cold this

time of year, but not here.

So thank you for, for picking that and

making it a good, uh, enjoy your place,

not only for your wedding, but for us

to enjoy tag along with your brother.

When we went to something with these longer

speeches, we get to play around more, which

is more fun.

Once we've got those safer shots and once

we've got lots of reaction shots, I often

try and layer different things into the foreground

here.

I'm shooting through his legs.

It supersedes everything in the room.

Everyone should be jealous of your love because

your love is real.

It proves that about you, someone will offer

their heart to yours.

The most perfect person alive.

And I'm, I'm, I'm not jealous of that.

I'm thankful for you because you are what

he deserves.

He loves you more than I met you

in a, we were in, uh, Chinatown or

something like that.

Yep.

Yep.

So I think I'm using Lanny's flash here.

So you can see I've got the light

on the couple here and Lanny's got his

flash in behind here.

So I've gone to the same channel as

him.

So I'm back flashing the speaker here and

because I'm getting the back of his body

or the side of his body, I'm trying

to get the speaker and reactor in the

same frame here.

I'm waiting to shoot when there's really obvious

gestures because his body language is going to

be what communicates that he's speaking here versus

his facial expressions.

And then of course, Lanny's down here filling,

filling the frame with just his facial expressions,

photographing all those in between moments.

So that's the reception.

That's speeches.

And we'll move on to dance now.