5 wedding cinematographers of the world talk about light
David Ruzicka
New york U.S.A.
To me any light can be beautiful. I love super soft diffused Book Light, although I recently started to discover the beauty of a hard light. If captured correctly it can be strikingly beautiful. I think of Caravaggio's painting - Chiaroscuro, the master of light and shadows. To me the biggest sin is to say "hey, I have camera that goes to 100,000 ISO, so I don't need light". I always need light. I always shoot with some kind of light, even at the reception. But I need to be careful no to use too many lights. That can create a very flat image, without any shadows. A balanced image has both light and shadows. They compliment each other, creating a contrast. This is a powerful tool for the image maker who directs his audience eyes to the specific part of the picture, making the image very dynamic.
Albano Franzoso
Dunkirk France
As a wedding videographer, i always think about light, i think its an important artistic choice. A subtle light and a beautiful edit makes a huge difference in the video. Love natural light, but im always looking for a nice light and shadow on my subjects.
I'm making a lot of weddings in Lille, Dunkerque wich is based in north France, and in the winter you don't have a lot of light, so with my lighting gear i'm using fast lenses like the canon 50mm f/1.2L wich is very luminous.
Daniel Armitage
London UK
My favourite and only real type of lighting I aim to use is natural. I don't use any lights other than what is already at a wedding. I am there to document, not to direct.
I'm addicted to lens-flares as much as I am addicted to coffee and try my hardest to create natural and undirected portrait shots with the sun backlighting the couple.
For me light is to my films what a drummer is to a band, it should never take centre stage, always keep to time and always be in the background but when it is not there you will surely know something is missing.
Robert van den Broek & François de Kok
Royal Rushes
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Light is everything and also for film and the best light is the sun.
We like that the sun is behind the wedding couple, so we can play with light and shadow.
Sunlight makes everybody happy, so if there is only 30 minutes sun in your weddingday try to film as much if possible with the weddingcouple as well shots of the location, the weddingclip feels like a sunny day.
Bride and Groom Films
dublin Ireland
An image is light. That's what it's all about. There are low light cameras, but there's no such thing as no light camera. I see a trend now to eliminate light in favor of ramping up ISO and I think it's the wrong way to be going. No matter how great your camera is in low light, you still need light to shape your image, to craft the picture you want...to emphasize one element over another in your frame. That's what images are: light. It's been the same since the first "shutter" captured a brief moment in time and made an image out of it.
