Over the past two weddings i have been trying to concentrate on my flash theory, when i normally shoot i am of course putting this into practice but i tend to just do it rather then think about it too much (some people may say that i do that in other parts of my life a little to much to...) so these two shoots i made a very conscious effort to review my settings.
The very basics of using a flash (i say this but of course there are many ways of doing this as each location will differ and each photographer will want different results) are to set your exposure for your background, this will mean that your subject should be slightly under exposed and then you use your flash to bring the subject to the correct exposure, this means that you can get the correct exposure for both your back ground with the ambient light and your subject with your flash, the background will also have richer colors (especially when it comes to sunsets) and your subject will just sit on top.
On my 7D i set the metering to Center-weighted average metering this means that when you are using your in view finder light meter you can take the reading of your background without moving your subject out the way.
The way i look at it is that you need some where for that flash light to go, if you were to select the "correct" exposure on a subjects face which is being lit by the ambient light, once you then add your flash on top of that the face is going to become over exposed. If you under expose your subject say by a stop your flash will then have somewhere to go and take your photograph to the "correct" exposure.
The wedding i did last week took place in one of the Gardens at the Colony Club, using this technique i was even slightly under exposing the background which made the greens real rich but not distracting and the couple stood out on top of that at the correct exposure.
The wedding last night (again this is going to prove my rain and good sun set theory) it rained just before the ceremony and was still slightly spitting through it. The bride and groom took it completely in there stride and i think it was Ferg (who was shooting video) and myself who were more worried about getting wet. Once 6 came the clouds where in place and the sun set was able to peak through on the horizon, you add some off camera flash to that and you are leading to some very dramatic results.
Just want to congratulate Steve and Pauline from last week and Lee and Sarah from last night, was a pleasure working with you all and i wish you all the best.
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