Do Video Lights Affect Photography At Weddings?

In the past when I was still learning my craft while photographing weddings in San Diego, had someone asked me this question, I would have said, "No!"

That's because back then, I shot a lot of flash photography with my shutter speed set for 1/125 second on my camera. Aperture was often set for f 5.6 or f 4.0. What this means is that the ambient light provided by bright video lights really didn't make much difference because most of my light needed to take a photograph was provided by the flash. The ambient light didn't really record on the film. But back then, many photographers shot this way as it was considered "normal" to set the shutter speed at as high of a sync speed as possible.

But today, if you ask me that question, I'd most likely say, "Yes! It affects photography." That's because today, you'll often find me shooting at slow shutter speeds - sometimes as slow as 1/10 second (it's called dragging the shutter) and very wide apertures (like f 2.8) to let in more ambient light. So any ambient light provided by the video lights is going to record on my digital camera. Ambient light helps "brighten up" the backgrounds of my photographs today.

Now if you read this quickly, you might be thinking that having a pro videographer that uses bright lights is not a good thing for photographers. Well, sometimes that's the case. But other times, a good pro videographer knows how to light his subject and often I can readjust my shooting technique to take advantage of his video lights for my own photography images!

Knowing how light works and how to modify it is a key to successful photography. I can tell you I'm pretty good at knowing all this and I look at situations as a challenge. Often I think out the solution and adjust my camera accordingly.

Today, my images look so much nicer than they did 16 years ago. That's because I know how to properly adjust my equipment to work with most any lighting situation at hand to get the best results and my shooting style has evolved over the years. Often, you'll see that my images offer a degree of lighting quality that you might not see in other photographer's work. That comes from experience and experimentation over all these years.