For the background, we staked out a nice spot at the entrance to the venue, where the event stylists had hung the couple's prenup photos on a trellis. For lighting, we brought a couple of SB-600 Speedlights and mounted them on tripods. For light modifiers, we used a Lightsphere to soften the main light, and a Lumiquest Mini-Softbox on the secondary light, held up above our group, to even out the shadows on the other side. The speedlights were controlled wirelessly through Nikon's handy Creative Lighting System. As a bonus, the sun was already setting directly behind the trellis, so we had on hand a strong backlight for the group. I planned to shoot the setup, but I was a little busy playing light man, holding up the secondary light on the tripod to get more height. Even with the mini-softbox on, the second light was still putting out too strong a side light and creating harsh shadows.
Thankfully, Cary's Nikon D70, in PictBridge printing mode, played nice with the portable Selphy printer made by that other camera company that has all the white lenses. We shot all of the portraits in Direct Print mode, and the 4x6" prints turned out surprisingly well straight out of the camera. The only hitch that came up had little to do with the equipment: Gourmet's Cafe suffered a couple of blackouts while the reception was in progress. The Selphy, while portable, could not be powered off batteries. It was a tense few minutes while we sat in the dark waiting for the power to come back so we could finally finish with our prints. In the end, we were told that the sponsors enjoyed the photos. So, all's well that ends well!
I have a few snapshots here in a set "just for friends" on that handy-dandy photo sharing site, Flickr.
