
Indoor Reception – Dark Ambient Light | Flash For Bright Editorial/Commercial
It happens quite often that your clients will want a bright, modern look to their images, but the venue/space offers only dark, ambient light. Not to fear, as we can add flash to create a bright editorial/commercial look. This is the type of look you might find published on wedding blogs or printed in magazines that feature a venue or vendor’s services.
Here are the steps and considerations for creating bright editorial/commercial images in dark ambient light:
- Shoot from the shadows: Frame and comose
- Expose to remove bad ambient (fluorescent)
- Use shutter speed to add back good ambient (candles, pins, etc.)
- Flash from existing light direction (fill the space)
- Single level diffusion needed (beauty, soft box, etc.)
- If needed: Double diffuse to soften (higher flash power)
- Fill entire reflectors/diffusers, watch direct spill!
- Flash to override ambient
- Analyze with histogram/highlight alert
- Adjust shutter for more/less ambient
Pye Jirsa
Founding Partner of Lin and Jirsa Photography and SLR Lounge.
Follow my updates on Facebook and my latest work on Instagram both under username @pyejirsa.