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Archive 2013 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash

  
 
tonyhart
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Hello all,

I shot a wedding recently at a local venue that I hadn't worked at before. Lovely couple, really awesome people, but the venue isn't what I'd call beautiful. I've worked lots of relatively plain venues in the past, but I was pretty amazed when I turned up on Saturday to find out that the ceremony room was bathed in pinky/purple UV uplighting. It was pretty intense. Has anyone ever shot a wedding like this? I've seen it at receptions and loads of times in the evening, but never during the ceremony itself. From a colour photography point of view it was pretty disastrous and I even think that the intensity of some of the UV interfered with my AF at times. Anyone got any experiences with this and/or advice on how to handle it in the future? I'm working on the edit at present and I'm just hating the colour...

P.S. Yeah, I'm doing a lot of b&w but even that doesn't work great at times...



Sep 09, 2013 at 08:41 AM
ricardovaste
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


The one time where I was informed of such lighting was at a reception. I had a chat about how it'll effect and work with/against the image making, and all as understood. But your situation is much different, with it being during the ceremony (really weird!). My only suggestion would be, perhaps, when you arrive at the ceremony room beforehand and see the lighting, perhaps investigate with the staff, maybe the groom, as to whether it's possible to turn off the lighting where the couple will be stood during the ceremony. Obviously, I don't know the extent of it... but "turn that sh*t off" is all I've really got, I'm afraid.


Sep 09, 2013 at 10:29 AM
amonline
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Most likely, the clients booked the venue because of the lighting. I would inquire as to whether the lighting can be changed to another color.

Most uplighting now days is rgb led based and changeable. You may have options if you ask.

If it doesn't, then you'll probably want to ask about using flash for some shots. It is what it is. The client knows that.

You should just safeguard yourself by mentioning the options and letting them decide.



Sep 09, 2013 at 11:24 AM
alohadave
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


If the couple chose the venue with the lighting in mind, they may not appreciate you tinkering with the colors or turning them off. If it were me, I'd be a bit annoyed getting a ton of black & white pictures if I booked you for your color work.

You don't have to like their choices, but you should be able to work around them. Take it as a challenge to rise above the circumstances.



Sep 09, 2013 at 11:48 AM
tonyhart
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


They didn't book the venue for the colour choices. Why are people making that suggestion? We're talking about some pretty heavy colour toning that is affecting skin tone drastically. I've been doing this for 5 years now and it's the worst I've experienced by some margin.


Sep 09, 2013 at 12:32 PM
ricardovaste
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


alohadave wrote:
If it were me, I'd be a bit annoyed getting a ton of black & white pictures if I booked you for your color work..


Would you be annoyed if you choose Tony though? Much of his work, arguably his best is in B&W, and I imagine this is part of why they hired him to photograph their wedding day.

Honestly, we're not talking about some pretty colours on the walls here, we're talking about purple people. It doesn't look good, it's actually bad lighting by whoever set it up, IMO. I'm all for rising above challenges and things but I don't think this is as simple as "Leave it as it is, as that's what the clients will want".



Sep 09, 2013 at 12:44 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


You want to talk about color walls, this venue had walls that changed color every few seconds. I just put some "clean" light on the couple and let the color walls do their thing.








Sep 09, 2013 at 12:50 PM
TTLKurtis
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Check this wedding out from my good friend Philip Thomas. I actually shot this one alongside him on film just for fun and the ceremony was very pink-purple as you describe it. I think the couple would have been very disappointed if he didn't deliver great color shots, and trust me it was not easy conditions by a long-shot.

http://www.philipthomasblog.com/tricia-and-eric-southwest-school-art-and-craft/



Sep 09, 2013 at 12:50 PM
DONIV
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


just curious, what was your lighting set up?

I usually like a lot of ambient light in my shots and use fairly low power on my off-camera and on-camera lighting.
In a situation like this, I tend to bump up the power of my off and on-camera flashes to overpower the UV light. On-camera flash is almost a must in these situations unless you have a GREAT assistant. I usually bounce the flash off the ceiling with the white card up and have it zoomed out pretty wide at about 28mm. I like to have at least 4 off camera flashes in these environments. You just have to play around with the off-camera flash a bit so it doesn't take away from the "feeling" of the room.

I hate walking into receptions like those. I was in this situation this past weekend and the wires of my triggers crapped out! (almost had a mild heart-attack) Luckily my second bailed me out with his extra triggers/receivers.



Sep 09, 2013 at 01:05 PM
tonyhart
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Like I said in the original post, this wasn't just a reception situation. This was during the ceremony. I tend to only light reception dancing and formals as this is in keeping with the look that I produce, but I did grab a flash for the signing of the register so I could bounce off the wall behind me and overpower some of the colour wash.

This is the first time I've ever shot in a wedding where I felt like my visual look was threatened by the environment I found myself in. My clients hire me, as with all photographers for the look of my work. While flashing everything may have solved the issue at hand, it would have introduced another problem, the bride and groom would be walking away with images not in keeping with the images upon which they based their choice to hire me.

Flash shooters, here's a question. How would you operate in a dark English church if you were told categorically by the vicar that flash was not allowed? The situation I encountered was pretty much the reverse of this. I think many would have to agree that while such an imposition wouldn't prevent the creation of nice images, it would threaten the visual signature you are used to producing.



Sep 09, 2013 at 01:14 PM
jcolman
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


tonyhart wrote:
Flash shooters, here's a question. How would you operate in a dark English church if you were told categorically by the vicar that flash was not allowed? The situation I encountered was pretty much the reverse of this. I think many would have to agree that while such an imposition wouldn't prevent the creation of nice images, it would threaten the visual signature you are used to producing.


I've shot in churches that were so dark I was at ISO 6400, f/1.4, 1/50 sec. You do what you have to do to get an exposure.

But in your situation, you have no choice if you can't use extra light. The best you can do is try to get decent skin tones in post. Yes, it may "threaten your visual signature" but you are hired to produce images of the wedding day, not paint the Cistine Chapel



Sep 09, 2013 at 01:26 PM
D. Diggler
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


jcolman wrote:
you are hired to produce images of the wedding day, not paint the Cistine Chapel


+1



Sep 09, 2013 at 03:12 PM
tonyhart
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Fair enough. If those are the only options open to me I concur. Just wondered if anyone had any ideas I may not have thought of.


Sep 09, 2013 at 03:13 PM
D. Diggler
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


tonyhart wrote:
They didn't book the venue for the colour choices. Why are people making that suggestion?


They didn't know there would be coloured lights?!?



Sep 09, 2013 at 03:14 PM
TTLKurtis
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


This is an example image from that link I posted before... he had the white balance set as low as it could go I believe and tint as high as it could go in Lightroom (or the other way around). Lighting was CRAZY in there, but result looks great IMO.




Edited on Sep 09, 2013 at 03:31 PM · View previous versions



Sep 09, 2013 at 03:18 PM
tonyhart
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


This was a fairly low end wedding as far as my market goes. While it may have been mentioned at some point to the bride and groom:

a) It was never relayed to me, despite meeting with the bride and groom twice and visiting the venue prior to the day.

b) I'm willing to bet the bride & groom, even if they did take note of the lighting colour, wouldn't have had the first idea of the impact it might have on photography. That's perfectly understandable of course.

c) They're relaxed people who had a small day and didn't micromanage every element. So no, they probably didn't know there would be coloured lights. In the same way that clients don't know that I used a 50 for a certain shot. They may have seen the room in a few photographs, but I'd imagine they got a general feel for the look of the venue and then gave a thumbs up.



Sep 09, 2013 at 03:19 PM
tonyhart
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Cheers Kurtis, I did have a good look through that wedding, some of it is really nice. Your friend did a superb job. I'll continue working on these in post and hopefully finish up with something reasonable, but I have to say, I'm struggling to get the skin colour to look decent without turning the background green. To give you a bit of an idea, here is a SOOC converted to JPG:

http://eyesite-design.co.uk/fredmiranda/colour_wash.jpg



Sep 09, 2013 at 03:26 PM
TTLKurtis
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Do you have one we can see from the back of the aisle? I could see making that one black and white but have the ones shooting up the aisle in color and then it should look more normal.


Sep 09, 2013 at 03:31 PM
tonyhart
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Agreed, I have a few from the back. That's pretty much what I'm going for to be honest. It's still pretty damn ugly SOOC, but it is manageable after PP as you can see below. From the front however it's pretty much 'embrace the hue or be damned!'.

SOOC:

http://eyesite-design.co.uk/fredmiranda/colour_wash_back_original.jpg

Edited:

http://eyesite-design.co.uk/fredmiranda/colour_wash_back.jpg






Sep 09, 2013 at 03:39 PM
Bearmann
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Heinous Purple Colour Wash


Maybe color replacement adjustment layer in Photoshop with masking to limit the effect to the couple? Of course, I know it would be too time consuming to do it on all of them.


Sep 09, 2013 at 03:44 PM
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