Original subtitles

Okay, so here's the dance floor.

And Lani and I have already, this is

minutes or a few seconds before the first

dance is going to start.

We've already tested out a bunch of lighting

scenarios.

We're going to start with the side light.

So one light coming in from the side

that you can see Lani's holding over here.

We've set our exposure for these chandeliers.

And we've also decided which direction we're going

to shoot.

So we're either going to be shooting this

direction or back towards where the camera is

right now.

We're not going to be shooting this direction

to the left, because then we're going to

have this big white tablecloth in the background.

And we're also going to try not to

shoot this direction.

That being said, if there's moments or if

there's stuff happening there that's of interest, we

can easily switch our position and start shooting

that direction.

But generally speaking, we're going to be shooting

into the depth of the room, because then

we're going to have that depth working for

us.

One of the things I'm also very aware

of shooting here is I'm going to, and

I fail at this as you will see,

but I'm going to try as much as

possible to keep the heads clear of all

these highlights.

There's all these distracting highlights and they're beautiful

chandeliers, but when they're intersecting with people's heads

during the first dance, they can be really,

really distracting.

So they had a waltz, uh, meaning they

were moving around the dance floor quite a

bit.

Um, it was quite, quite tricky to shoot.

And you can also see it's quite bright

in there.

I've got a 16 to 35 on.

I'm mostly at 35 here, but I realized

that I'm probably going to be cropping most

of these photos in post.

So I don't want to get too, too

close during that first dance.

Okay.

Now we've switched to a different lighting technique

here.

So Lenny's backflashing the couple now, and I've

just got one single backflash, no fill light

and I'm backing up.

I'm just trying something.

I thought maybe we could use the floor

and cast their shadows on the floor with

that backflash.

Didn't really quite turn out the way I

hoped it would, but it's a three minute

dance.

We may as well try something new.

Okay.

So now we're moving on to the father

-daughter dance and we're going to start this

one off the same.

We're going to start it off with a

side light.

There was lots of really nice moments during

this dance between her and her dad.

He was super expressive, but it's, you guys

have no idea how painful it is watching

this footage and seeing all the things that

I'm missing when they're turned away from me.

So I'm just, I've decided where to shoot

and I'm just waiting for them to turn

into the light.

Okay.

Now I've just signaled to Lenny to go

in behind with the flash.

So he's going to backflash them, but I've

also got my front flash on now.

And now I'm actually really happy with the

results.

This is the first point during the dances

where I'm like, this is the lighting scenario

we should have started with.

So we got a front fill light and

a backlight as well, telling him to turn

it up a bit.

So we're constantly making these adjustments through the

dance.

Lenny's working his ass off, trying to keep

that flash out of view of my camera.

And I'm in the wrong spot with my

camera here.

I should have been square to them.

But by the time I realized it, it

was a bit too late.

So sometimes being committed to shooting in a

certain direction bites you in the ass.

But all you can do is hedge your

bets.

And of course, because it was COVID, there

was no sort of reactions that I was

looking for on the side of the dance

floor that there might've been during a regular

wedding.

So that's the first dances.

I hope that was helpful for you guys

to see.

Mostly helpful in seeing our big mistakes and

where we could have improved and maybe taken

some better shots.

And make sure you watch the next chapter

where we really deconstruct our lighting setups on

the dance floor, because that'll explain where we

put our lights and why we decided to

put them there.