Challenge #2
INDOOR BRIDAL PARTY
GROUP SHOT
This bride had been following our work and
specifically requested that we do a Vanity
Fair-esque portrait of her bridal party inside
this stone mansion (the Branford House in
Groton, Connecticut, where we ourselves got
married!). She even rented the green settee
and had it brought in for this picture.
The dark walls and smaller windows
make everything even darker, and on top
of that, the wedding took place in the dead
of winter when it gets dark early. The other
part of this challenge, of course, was getting
even, but still interesting (dimensional and
dynamic) light across a group this big.
SETUP AND EQUIPMENT
We shot this with the 5-foot Profoto
Octa and a D1 behind it, with light coming in from the right side and slightly
forward, and a white reflector on a stand
on the left side to help kick some light
back onto to that far side. (If we were to
shoot this same portrait today, we would
definitely use the B1, so we don’t have
to plug it in, paired with the Profoto XL
white 65-inch umbrella.)
Lens: 50mm | Shutter speed: 1/80
F-stop: f/4.5 | ISO: 250
EXTRAS
We used a slower shutter speed to allow
some of the warm ambient light in from the
chandelier so that the light felt more found
and natural. To make sure we didn’t end
up with mixed light, Justin put tungsten
gel on the D1. Because we were using the
D1 and air remote, we had plenty of power
even though this was a larger group and
our aperture was stopped down to f/4.5. By
bringing the light around more to the front
(somewhere around a 45-degree angle) we
were able to get a more even spread of light
across the group and we also made sure
that we weren’t casting shadows from one
person’s head onto the next person’s face.
ALL PHOTOS © JUSTIN & MARY MARANTZ