Shooting an Entire Wedding After Dark

Wedding photography is a difficult enough genre without any extra challenges thrown in the mix, but can you imagine having to shoot a wedding after dark with no flash to help? This interesting video follows a photographer as he tackles that exact challenge and contains some helpful tips in case you ever find yourself in the same situation.

Coming to you fromĀ Taylor Jackson, this great video follows him as he shoots a nighttime wedding in extremely dark conditions. It is so dark during the ceremony that his typical exposure is 1/100 s, f/1.4, ISO 5,000. Of course, he's already wide open with his aperture, and any slower of a shutter speed would begin to result in motion blur, leaving him to push the ISO to some pretty extreme values. Jackson mentions that he chose to do this instead of using flash specifically because of the couple and the venue, knowing that a flash popping every second would ruin the intended ambiance and draw far too much attention. It's quite the challenge, and it is very interesting to see how he handled it. Check out the video above for more.

Also, if you really want to dive into the world of wedding photography, check out "How To Become A Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer."

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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3 Comments

My first thoughts would be " why'? Would you not bring lighting to a wedding in the first place and who doesn't plan for such a thing

tldr: if its dark, raise you iso to get faster shutter speeds

Not quite sure why it's a big deal for him shooting at ISO 5000? I've shot up to 25k on my 5d 4 (there's plenty of software that will clean up the noise), though for most weddings i've done, 12,800 is plenty fine. Keeping the ISO down while opening aperture to 1.4 is great if that's his thing, but i'm not keen for ultra diffused dof backgrounds for events, nor dealing with razor thin focus.