- Artificial Light
- Center Framed
- Dark
- Field
- Low Light
- Minimalistic
- night
- Party
- Wide
The story behind the image
While speaking to the owners of this wedding venue, we had a look over the field towards whether the dance party was happening and being in the middle of the Tuscan wilderness with no lights around – this tiny section of life stood out amongst the blackness of the night. We immediately realized that this would be such a killer shot for an end to the wedding story.
Composition
Since this spot of light was pretty small amongst the night environment, we wanted to play a bit with minimalism. We framed it in the centre of the frame as best we could (we fine-tuned it in Lightroom afterwards), and allowed enough space around the dance floor to accentuate the minimalism.
framing
Center Framed
Focusing
Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)
The focus in this shot was pretty easy to lock on to since the dance floor had a massive spot light shining onto the guests. This was plenty of light for the camera to find its contrast. We simply moved our single focus point over the general area of the dance floor, held our camera as steady as we could, and found the focus.
Focus Mode
Single Shot Autofocus
Focus POints
Single Point
Focused on
the crowd
Equipment &
Exif
Camera
Lens
Flash
Filter
1/160 @ f/1.2 ISO5000 WB-Auto
The way the EXIF is written out follows the common photographic method (with the inclusion of White Balance at the end). Here it is broken down:
Shutter Speed @ Aperture ISO White Balance.
Light & Weather
There wasn’t much light to work within this shot, and that played to our advantage since it allowed the dance floor to be the only thing sticking out in the night. That being said, there was a massive spotlight shining directly on the guests as they danced. This did create a bit of challenge as the highlights were immediately blown out.
Light Type
Artificial Light
Time of day
Night
Editing Workflow
How did you edit this image?
The edits of this image were a bit more complex than normal due to the amount of noise caused by shooting at ISO 5000. We added our base preset Protea and then tweaked the colors as well as the usual exposure sliders to get the minimal look we were after. We then took an adjustment brush and painted over areas that we wanted to darken, and areas where we wanted to control the highlights.
Editing Software
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Preset Used
Challenges
The hardest part with this image was keeping ourselves steady while shooting with a long lens in such low light. Along with this, another challenge was the highlights being blown out by the spotlight.
Solutions
We increased our ISO all the way up to 5000 to allow us a better shutter speed which would help reduce blurriness. It did of course introduce a ton of noise in the image, but with a bit of time & careful attention, we were able to remove it in Lightroom. As for the spotlight blowing out the highlights, we just used our adjustment brush over areas where we needed to calm it down a bit.
Location
Location Name
The Lazy Olive
Location aDDRESS
The Lazy Olive, Loc. Finerri, 7, 53041 Asciano SI, Italy
Loation Type
Wedding / Event Venue
Country
Italy
Keep your eyes open and look for strong “ending” shots. Think of the location, or the dance floor and see if you can shoot it from further away. It adds a nice closure to the coverage as it leaves the viewers with something in their minds. It’s like a “slow fade” to the story rather than an abrupt cut.
Sometimes you may be in a situation where you’re really going to have to push your camera to its limits. Our advice is to just do it. Rather sort out the trouble of noise later on than to not take the image at all and potentially miss out on a cool shot.
