cgardner
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Getting flattering light on faces pretty much distills down to getting good light in both eyes and avoiding a large, dark and distracting nose shadow. The former is relatively easy, the latter can be far more difficult especially when there are two faces in the photo with noses pointing in opposite directions.
Simply pointing two lights on either side from opposite directions might seem to be an ideal solution, but its not. Crossing lights causes the two lights to cancel each other creating muddled modeling with patchy highlights and unfilled low spots where neither light reaches (smile lines, corners of the mouth, base of the nose).
The solution to the problems created by crossed lights and sideways nose shadows is to: 1) place the key light where the shadows from both noses will not be seen, directly behind the nose, and; 2) overlap instead of crossing the two lights. It is a strategy commonly used in glamor shots to emphasize the eyes and mouth by making the nose in the middle less distracting known generically as "butterfly". It isn't flat lighting. The key light is raised over the camera high enough so it creates flattering downward modeling on the cheekbones while at the same time putting good light in the eyes and hiding the nose shadow beneath it. The trick to making it appear soft is to overlap the key light on top of even fill rather than having the two collide like a head-on car crash shortening each others shadow transitions in the same way the cars get shorter. But since you are using hot lights with shoot through umbrellas you should be able to manage nicely with a single umbrella over the camera, preferably with both lights blasting through it.
The centered butterfly lighting will flattering lighting on both faces of a couple or every face in a group shot. The advantages of that strategy in a production line situation are that the lighting is a no-brainer allowing you to concentrate on the poses and expressions, and the same lighting will work for couples and groups. You might not be planning on shooting groups, but wherever groups of people congregate sooner or latter someone will want a group shot and then everyone will want a group shot. Also keep in mind you are taking one or two shots of each couple, not 100 you can edit to pick the best one. All good reasons to be prepared with risk averse lighting strategy which can handle a wide range of situations. Will it be great lighting in every shot? No. But more importantly there won't be any unflattering lighting on any face in any shot which is far more important in that type of situation.
I'd suggest since you say don't have a great deal of experience shooting couples and have different ideas of what might work you round up a couple friends and try the different approaches and evaluate the results. For posing tips click the WWW button below and look for the tutorials on posing groups and the "feet up" posing method.
Also something to consider with your hot lights is where you can safely set up and whether the power outlets at the venue can accommodate 1000W of hot lights. Flash would be better both in terms of light output and logistics.
Chuck
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