Natural Light and Wedding Photography

There are two ways to take a photograph: using natural light, i.e. light that hasn't specifically been produced by the photographer, and using artificial light, which would usually be from a flash head on top of the camera body.

Well over 90% of the images we take at a wedding are lit by natural light, for several reasons. The main benefit for us is that we're able to show our clients images from the day that actually show the day as it was. For whilst flash can sometimes provide a technically more pleasing image, it is of course 'false' light. Photographs that have been taken with a flash head providing some or all of the light don't show how a scene actually looked, but how it looked for the 1/100th of a second that the flash was illuminating it.

Fair enough, we could say. But surely what matters more than anything is the technical quality of the image? By reply, I would say that what enables our clients to remember their wedding day scenes is the ambient light present at the time, something often lost with flash. This doesn't mean of course, that the natural light photographer is absolved of the responsibility of image quality. Many wedding reception rooms, as an example, are oak-pannelled and can throw up lots of very high contrast light which must be controlled, but actually using flash in this situation is no easier than just moving one's position relative to the subject.

The other main reason we don't like using flash is much more straightforward: Our aim at a wedding is to remain unobtrusive, and as soon as a flash head goes off people turn to look at the photographer. It 'blows our cover' and as well as being an unwelcome distraction for guests looking to have a good time it also makes it harder to photograph people naturally. All of a sudden there is a small but noticeable increase in posing and awareness from groups of people. When we're looking to capture the character of a wedding guest small differences in people's awareness means a lot.

So when would we use flash? When we're asked to take formal group images. In this case I feel it's better to have a technically strong image. We're not interested in natural light now - we simply want to see our subject's features well. Dance floor pictures are also candidates for flash photography. As there are often so many other light sources such as disco strobes on at the same time and for different durations it is a very risky venture to rely upon these solely.