Wedding Photo Booth

At Alli's wedding, they wanted a photo booth to take fun pics of the guests. She agreed to bring some background fabric, and I agreed to do the rest. I gave my friend Jules Bianchi a call, since she's been setting up her "Joy Cam" at weddings - which is her version of a photo booth - to see if she had any tips. Jules always posts fun shots from her Joy Cam on her blog. Jules usually sets her lighting up with an off-camera flash for directional lighting from the side - which creates nice, crisp shadows. This lighting really looks nice, but takes some thought to ensure it looks right on wildy moving subjects and multiple people. She's good at that, but I needed something more mindless :-)

I decided to use my ring-flash for a look that more mimics a traditional photo booth. The ring flash is used for fashion a lot as a beauty light. It creates this really cool soft outlining shadow around the subject that separates them from the background. Because it's used directly around the lens, you don't have to worry about multiple subjects casting shadows on each other. Here's the light I use, it's made by Alien Bees (White Lightning). The images were processed straight from Lightroom, using my *Soft Defaults preset and a little vignette.

Click the image to see it larger

Comments

[Thea]

This is fabulous Kevin!
So great with the mustaches:)

[Jennifer Chaney]

These are hilarious! Thanks for your tips/breakdown... not sure I'm up for the challenge, but at least you've given me a good option with the ring flash.

[Clark Lara]

Great post, that gives some ideas to use at weddings. i wonder if you could get the same effect using the Rayflash or Orbis?

[laura]

Love this! Love the mustaches too - great prop! :) And thanks for sharing the how-to - I've wondered how people are doing this.

[Jen Rinaldi Photography]

Looooove the photo booth and that you've made it really simple to do! I've been really wanting to do this at weddings! Thanks for sharing what you use and how you did it!