Lighting How-To at Llansantffraed Court Hotel
We seem to have accidentally developed a “signature” shot on the steps at Llansantffraed Court and many of our couples are now requesting a similar shot. We have even learnt that one of our couples booked their wedding at the hotel based on this image.
The trend started with Julie and Nick back in 2007 and they have a big exhibition quality gallery wrap canvas in pride of place on their living room wall.
Here is the latest one from Lindsay and Debbie’s wedding a couple of weeks ago.
To execute this shot we are using two mains-free Broncolor Mobil flash packs and and a Nikon speedlight all linked by wireless remote control and the hotel’s carriage lights on the balustrade.
Fortunately with a solid background in commercial and advertising photography (Welsh Commercial Master Photographer of the Year for a few years early 2000s running and BIPP Polaroid Photographer of the Year 2002) before switching into weddings means Rob has lots of equipment that the average wedding photographer doesn’t have at his disposal (and probably wouldn’t choose to carry around either!).
The key light is a large brolly on top of a 15ft heavy-duty lighting stand to camera left, the background light on another 15ft stand fires into a 120 degree reflector to light the tree. To add some sparkle to the couple the speedlight is manually set on the telephoto end.
The exposure is chosen to record the carriage lights. The whole scene is exposed at 800 iso, 30th of a second at f11 on a Nikon D3.
The timing is important so that a “midnight-blue” sky adds to the ambience rather than having a featureless “black-hole”.
The only post-processing has been to add a vignette around the edges.
The result delights our couples and is well worth carrying the equipment and the additional setting up time and effort! Our ethos is to try and create something very special for each of our brides and grooms.
Here is the lighting diagram:-
