Quote:
Originally Posted by Glen Elliott
(Post 1582026)
No I shoot with at least one other person. However even if I was solo I'd take the 20 minutes or so to set up lighting as I mentioned above during cocktail hour. At the very least you can mount the light you were going to put on your camera on a light stand a few feet away from your camera. That way it's off-axis from your subject and up high above people's line of sight.
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Not only has every event I've done been a one-man crew (and this is the trend now, people don't want to pay for two), but few if ANY allowed for stationary shots. Everyone moves within a large, sometimes cavernous hall. I never bother to set up my tripod (unless it's a special occasion like a floor show), there's simply no time, I just use my monopod for support and keep moving to follow the action. Three-point lightning would be left behind the action as the focus moves from one minute to the next - I don;t have twenty minutes for anything, let alone move lights, cables, sand bags, etc.
A camera-mounted light is essential.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glen Elliott
(Post 1582026)
I don't mean to come off condescending in any way. I just wanted to express my point in more detail to explain that this method is indeed viable and, in my opinion, largely superior in both aesthetic results and visibility/obtrusiveness to the guests.
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In an ideal world the bride and groom (and event organizer) would have an appreciation for aesthetics and would understand that the images they see on their TV screens were produced using entire crews, two cameras, wired sound, light kits, lengthy post-processing, etc. But the vast majority of people still think the camera craps out a finished movie at the end of the night, complete with visual FX, so it's impossible to convince them that we need to upset their carefully-choreographed ceremony to accommodate lights and stands (let alone pay for someone to do this).
I hate the look of an on-camera light too, but in 99% of cases it's that or nothing. People expect the photographer to get by with a camera-mounted flash, it's no different for the videographer.
There seems to be two vastly different universes in event videography: the handful few who get multi-thousand dollar shoots with complete crews and great production values, and the rest of us grunts who have to compete with camcorder jockeys and have to cut corners to get the gig. Heck, some of my colleagues get more and more requests to simply hand over the raw footage, no editing - people are happy to watch it on their computer, uncut, if it means saving a few hundred bucks more.
I really dislike what this biz has become. Used to be there was room for creativity, now it's just technician work.
J.