Original subtitles

When you go to a wedding, you'll notice

a lot of candlelight.

It's gonna be everywhere.

It's an easy way to adorn a location.

It can be really beautiful to work with.

And obviously, you'll usually find this at night

because it's gonna create this gorgeous ambience.

Now, there's a couple of things you have

to be wary of.

I've mentioned this in a couple of segments,

but in the context of this conversation, it's

important to remind you how to, in fact,

to use candlelight.

Well, usually what will happen is candlelight's usually

quite low.

In this case, we've got a tall candelabra.

Arguably, that will be close to standing height,

so the faces aren't too much higher than

this.

But we have to remember that candlelight will

usually come from below.

So what we have to do is we

have to tilt the face so that basically

the face is parallel to the light.

Because candlelight traditionally is usually from down low

and it goes up high, it will cause

those unflattering shadows on the upper cheekbones, which

we have to be very, very wary of.

So in this case, we got away with

it because we thought of a pose that

would actually do that and it's not an

issue.

In this case, it's actually disguised quite well.

We have several tea candles here on this

particular table, and although they look like they're

standing up very, very straight, they're actually tilting

towards the camera enough so that we don't

get those, again, unflattering shadows in the upper

cheekbones, and that works well.

Just for the sake of the argument here,

what we've got is we've got an off

-camera flash behind the guy smoking a cigar,

and then we've got candlelight actually illuminating the

front of them as well.

We've got the beautiful contrast of warm light

and the cool sky just after sunset there

as well.

In this case as well, I love this

because, you know, traditionally when you're using the

candlelight, you should be shooting with a tungsten

white balance because you're dealing with a very

yellow light source.

I mean, fire is yellow.

So if you use tungsten, it'll correct that

warmth a little bit or enough that you

get that beautiful contrast.

With this particular photograph, it was really, really

fun because we've got this flood of light

with this fog.

It's a very, very cold day or cold

evening in Rome.

The angle I did because just straight just

looked a little bit weird.

I felt like the angle created a bit

of beautiful movement and energy.

And again, the couple are leaning towards the

candlelight and the smoke behind them, the fog,

that's actually someone smoking behind them.

So someone was smoking a cigarette and I'm

like, and they're just blowing out the smoke.

I could see the smoke quite vividly.

And just remember, if you like smoke in

any capacity, whether it's fog, whether it's cigarette

smoke, whether it's vape smoke, you are gonna

see that a lot easier if you backlight

it.

So in this case, there was already some

spotlights on this particular building.

I had one of my assistants at the

time, there was a big wedding.

They were squatting down, smoking a cigarette, blowing

up the smoke.

We've got this contrast of this very cold

light because it was daylight.

Now that we're actually using a tungsten white

balance to clean up that warmth, that saturation

of that yellow candlelight, it made what was

daylight into blue.

So now we have this beautiful contrast.

People will call this mixed lighting, alluding to

the fact that that's a mistake.

I just think that that's really cool.

For me, there are no mistakes.

You really just wanna execute what you want.

If that looks good, accept it.

Don't say, well, it's someone said in a

textbook or a seminar that mixed lighting is

bad.

Just like right now that I'm saying to

you, this is just my opinion, take it

or leave it.

Just trust your gut.

If you think it looks good, it probably

does.

If he thinks it looks a bit bad,

it probably does.

And probably a shot that was photographed with

candlelight that I've shown you once or twice

before here is one of my favorite of

recent times and certainly a signature legacy shot

from my portfolio.

And that is at the end of the

night, we've got a handful of tea candles.

They're leaning towards the actual candle so that

they're more parallel to the light.

Got a beautiful soft expression on their faces

there as well.

We have a disheveled background, which of course

we expose for first.

And they brought the candlelight either closer or

further away to get the balance of the

exposure.

So remember the golden rule with candlelight, lean

your subjects towards the candlelight so the lighting

is somewhat parallel.

Be careful when posing a bride with a

veil next to candle speakers, you could light

her up in flames.

So that will be never good for business.

And perhaps you would get a less than

a one star rating on Google.

So enjoy, have fun, and don't forget to

practice with candlelight.

So when you're faced with that situation, you

know what to do.

Have fun.