At a recent wedding the time we had for the formal photographs were compressed, and we had to come up with a variety of romantic portraits and formal photos.  This time I decided I want to do them only using video lights.  The wysiwyg nature of lighting a subject with video lights was a bonus in this case, allowing me to work fast.

I had my assistant crouch down behind them, rim lighting them with the video lights.  The actual light falling on the couple is the ambient light in the room.  The image above was shot at 1/80th @ f2.8 @1600 iso, using the Nikon D3 and Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens.  The other images here which are directly lit by video lights, are at different settings with lower ISOs and higher shutter speeds.  But since this image was rim lit by the video lights, and the video lights didn’t contribute much to the actual exposure values, I had to go higher on the ISO, and a little lower on the shutter speed than I normally prefer.

I purposely let the video light flare here, by changing my position until I could see the edge of the video light.

The image above had some post-processing done to it, by running one of the Totally Rad actions on it, giving a slightly retro feel which I think suited it.   Here is what the image looked like with only the WB touched up a bit …

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Two more images from the portrait session: 

 1/100 @ f3.2 @ 1000 ISO

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1/100 @ f2.8 @ 1000 ISO

Withthese images, I do have to touch up the exposure as part of the normal editing of the RAW file.   Since my assistant would move position during a sequence, whether inadvertently, or whether on my instruction, there will be some variation in exposure, as well as variation in the spread of light.  But this is part of the bit of serendipity of working with video lights – there are often a surprise in how the images comes out simply by the light being positioned differently for various images in the same sequence.

More articles on how I use video light:
- Sasha L (model),
- Priscilla (model),
- embracing tungsten light. 

And here’s a list of equipment if you’re curious about which video lights I use.

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