More Techniques For Photographing Events

More Techniques For Photographing Events

by William Lulow

As I have mentioned previously in articles like this, whenever I shoot an event, I like to give it a little extra interest by arranging some lightings that include light for the backgrounds and accent lights.

Lighting is what drives a photograph’s impact. Light from a flash mounted on top of a camera is very limited in what it can do. The power of on-camera flash units and their reliance on “lamp-to-subject” distances only allow these units to deliver enough light to illuminate subjects in front of the camera. Unless the background is lit as well, the result is usually an ugly image with a jet-black background like this:

I think these kinds of images would look much better and have more viewer appeal if more of the venue was included. The way to do this is to LIGHT THE BACKGROUND. These days there are a number of ways you could employ extra lights when shooting an event that will make your pictures really stand out. One thing that makes these pictures instantly better is BACKGROUND DETAIL. Here are some examples of events I have shot all using two, three or even more lights.

This image was made with a light off camera to the right to light the woman and the flash on the camera lighting the man:

This image was made with one off-camera light. The main light on the camera was turned off to create the shadow figures framing the subjects.

Here, a second light was positioned off to the right and behind these people.

The setup for this shot involved two extra lights positioned to the rear and aimed at the subject on the runway. This was in addition to the flash on the camera.

This image was made also using just an off-camera light with the main light on the camera turned off to create the shadow area framing the main subject.

Each of these examples were made with at least two lights and sometimes three.  I start with one on top of the camera. I always use that during an event because even on the off chance that my other lights don’t fire, I will always have the main subject lit correctly. I now use my MONOLIGHTS as additional lights instead of my older speedlights which each needed a battery attached and a radio hook up. Today, my camera setup looks like this:

The beauty of this setup is that the flash has a trigger built into it that will fire my other strobes at the same time. It also allows me to regulate the power setting of all lights that I use from the camera position, something I couldn’t do before.

I can use as many additional lights as I think I might need to get really great effects at events. It also works if there are multiple rooms that need coverage during the same event. I usually try to position these around the venue so that I can cover more than just a few spots of action within the event itself. This is all accomplished with the use of the radio flash trigger. As long as I am within the distance covered by it, my lights will fire when I need them. I am also able to switch them on or off from the camera position and do the same with the on-camera flash. So, the results are almost endless.

I have decided to use the Westcott Monolights as my secondary lighting. They can all be controlled by the speedlight on the camera:

So, the small speedlight shown here puts out approximately 80watt/seconds of power and has a built-in transceiver which sends signals to my other Westcott monolights enabling quite a few different lighting possiblities.

I have been experimenting with these and they work fabulously. And whereas my speed lights really didn’t have any light modifiers that worked well, these have some honey-comb light directors that keep the light from spilling on to any nearby subjects. Here’s another image showing one position of two extra lights to cover an event:

This is one image made with this setup. Using just a flash on-camera, the background would have been completely black. The extra lights used lit up the background as well as the subject:

Once you position your extra lights, you can then move about the room and if you keep one light behind your subject it will create a nice HALO or EDGE LIGHT effect. Your subject will then be lit by the flash on the camera while the others provide highlights, thereby making the lighting much more interesting.

My goal, when photographing events is to try to create some more creative images around the action that is taking place that is closer to my actual, studio setup work. The secret is to use multiple, off-camera lights in addition to the one on the camera.

I publish these articles on lighting for events from time to time and cover many updates as I discover new and different ways to get really creative results with basic coverage types of photoshoots.