Photographing a Sweet Sixteen

A family member (in-law) had asked me to photograph their sweet sixteen and I was flattered to capture these special moments in their life. I don’t normally photograph people, but it was definitely something I have trained for in the past and enjoy practicing when the time arises. For the event I used two light modifiers. On my standard light stand I used a Westcott 60 umbrella with removable cover and a 2′ square softbox. Combined with a fill-able sand bag to hold it stable and an umbrella bracket to hold everything to the light stand. Word of advice, get a solid light stand so it will hold heavier objects and not easily keel over or flex.

The location was a beautiful one. Originally the formal portraits were going to be shot outside, but thankfully we decided to just wing it outside and fight the sun. The reason I say I was fighting the sun is that our originally overcast skies decided to magically part and backlight our subjects. Thankfully the backdrop never really developed any harsh blown highlights as the brush and vegetation ran high enough to cast a full shadow over the scene. The photo of the family you see above was one that I put my personal touch on. I do have normal full length verticals for the family, but I wanted to tie in the water feature per request of Briana in her beautiful red dress. For her sweet sixteen portraits she wanted this scene the most rather then in doors. It was definitely for the best that it played out this way.

Lighting for the larger group portraits was done by shooting the SB-800 into the silver side of the umbrella. This creates a huge soft light source and will evenly spread across our subjects. That’s the key there, even light. If you bring the light source too close to some of the group or use one that does not provide a large enough light source fall off will be very dramatic. Leaving some of your subjects in the dark.

As the sun came out Dina was a phenomenal good sport in her heels on grass. She was holding up my translucent pop-out circular reflector to cast a shadow protecting highlights from forming on Briana’s left shoulder. When shooting one to two people I would use the softbox. The quality of light is fantastic and just really wraps the subject. The better your lighting the less work in photoshop later. You don’t want to create harsh shadows showing off features the way they aren’t meant to be portrayed. There was no crazy post production work done in these first two photographs. Other then touch ups to faces using the healing brush and black point/levels; we were set. I shot cloudy white balance all day as a warming effect to make skin tones more pleasing.

Her theme for her sweet sixteen was the Nightmare at the Opera. I wanted to make sure that some of the portraits, formal and of the party, were not all candid smiles. Sometimes people in their relaxed state or in a moment speaks larger volumes. Here I asked her to strike a more serious post to be more dramatic and fitting to what I would do in post production. In photoshop I used silver efex pro and went with a dark sepia overlay. Dialing a tad more structure and darkening it a bit more to really put emphasis on the texture of her dress.

Details, details details… A key often over looked at a party/ceremony. The family more often then not -you would imagine- puts an awful amount of effort and energy into the presentation of the event. If you did all that work wouldn’t you want to remember it for decades to come? For that reason you should try and be creative photographing all the elements of the event. Creative to an extent however. You don’t want angles too crazy or things too cropped or wide missing the point of the event. These two photos had a tonal contrast filter pass in color efex pro. It adds that extra punch and crispness to bring extra relevance to the photo.

Moments. Capturing the moments is another element to the whole picture. This is something that will keep you on your toes. You have to constantly be aware and in tune with what’s going on. Make sure your buffer is ready and your flash charged. Your going to have moments where someone will step in front of you during a crucial moment (happened) or your caught off guard because your switching from the dance floor to the family meet and greets throughout the event. The best way to approach it all is  to know as much as you can time wise and when things are supposed to unfold and stay on top of your gear. Make sure if you made an adjustment to get a certain shot you brought it back to normalcy. How many times has a person left their camera in manual mode trying to get the camera to do exactly what they wanted, but when the quick moments happened we were caught off guard and ended up with an under/over exposed image. It’s not easy and it will happen to us all, but keeping it in the back of your mind goes a long way.

A 30% fill with a tonal contrast filter for the first photo and a blur vignette and silver efex black and white conversion for the other.

One thing Briana planned for her party was a grand entrance. No one at the party would see her until she was introduced to everyone on the floor. I wanted to edit this photo to put focus on our subject. There was a lot going on and two other competing people. Considering our subject was blocked I turned to the computer for help. Using color efex pro I used a blur vignette to soften everything else, but our subject. Sort of like a lensbaby effect. Next I used a mask to apply a tonal contrast filter only to the feathers and our subject. Adding a sharpness that draws your eye as the rest is blurred out of focus.

No editing here. There was a beautiful fireplace that was great for portraits. Throughout the event I stuck person after person in front of it for portraits. Had them step out 4-5ft to prevent a harsh shadow and we had it made. I did a portrait here with one flash on camera of over 10 people. The lighting was simple. I had the SB-800 mounted pointing upward with the bounce card extended. The flash head was clicked in by the 60 degree mark and used TTL. That was it. Surprisingly simple and produced great light from one person to a whole group.

The show was capped off with putting the lady of the night in the spot light. Quite literally. I took out the softbox set it up high and shot downward toward her. Shooting as slow as possible to get a sharp image. Around 1/8th of a second or so. I was slowing the shutter as much as possible to pull in that beautiful ambient over head lighting. The shadow cast was used to knock out the outlets for the electric. And that’s all she wrote. No special filters.

Lastly have fun! Don’t fear experimenting with the light. The big man up front has wanted to do something scary and his cousins were a great sport. I took the flash unit and had someone hold it 90 degrees off the subject. Creating this harsh lighting with deep shadows.  All that was left was the perfect expressions from the subjects. As stressful as it all can get you can’t forget to try new things and have fun!