 Jennifer L. |
Aquarium glare;bride-to-be I'm a bride-to-be and I would like to get married in an aquarium however our photographer has told us that aquariums are one of the worst places to take pictures because of the glare from the flash. Pictures are very important to me so is there any reasonable way to get both the aquarium and great pics or is it time to find another venue?
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Mark Feldstein |
Hi Jennifer: I think maybe you meant "Glare to go where no bride has gone before". Whew, good question. Truly a whale of an assignment. Doable, yes. Can your wedding photographer handle it? Dunno. First, I'm going to assume that whatever aquarium you're using will grant permission to set-up and shoot there. If you don't know, best talk to their media director and tell them what you're planning. A few grab shots is one thing. But a whole entourage with a lot of photo gear may be a different story. There are a couple of ways to do what you're asking based on the old principle that angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. The problem, as you've noted, is the fireballs produced by the flash reflecting from the plexiglass. Depending on the layout of the place, it could be minimal or horrendous, some spots may be better or worse than others. Most wedding photographers I know don't take a lot of studio equipment with them on location. You kind of need to be geared for that kind of production. But if your photog. can rig a couple of light stands and hang his strobes on those maybe with some light modifiers to prevent light spill, you've got a chance. He or she needs to be somewhat creative with the lighting and probably place it off to the side so as to work with it more or less indirectly. Getting a higher vantage point, say off a balcony or upper deck shooting down may be useful while tripping his strobes with a radio slave. Bouncing some fill light into the scene from a side reflector or two may be helpful. Both the main and fill need to reflect off the glass off camera or out of the viewfinder. A polaroid back is going to be a real asset to the guy. Another solution is to use the ambient light available in the facility and a little bit of fill-in flash for shadows. That depends on how much ambient light there is and what kind. What you're up against with that is the color temperature of the lighting at the aquarium. If it's like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, they use a mix of sodium vapor with tungsten or flourescent in some areas. Unless you're shooting in black and white, the color shifts, which might be correctable with filters (or photoshop) can be major, even if the flash balances some of the scene out to normal daylight color temperatures. Another problem will be the tanks themselves. The water is often a tad murky making it difficult to actually see the fish unless they're moving in close to the viewing areas. That can likely be handled as well with some additional lighting equipment. But if you couple that with reflections on the plexiglas, you may not get the detail you want in the background. A circular polarizing filter may help, but that cuts down on the amount of light reaching the film. That in turn, creates depth of field headaches so the fish might not be clearly visible in the scene. This also depends on the lens they're shooting with at the time. The background may still be too dark to work with. Again, it depends on the facility and how they illuminate the tanks. All-in-all, before your photographer says ick, no way, and perhaps gets crabby about it, if [s]he's not familiar with the place, they ought to at least take a look and check out the possibilities versus the problems. If they are familiar with it and say no, then maybe [s]he isn't equipped for it, or it's too much of a hassle for them. In that event, you can always look for a photographer who knows architectural location work, how to photograph highly reflective objects, and would likely know how to solve these kinds of problems. Remember though, the difficult can be handled, the impossible just costs a larger fee. Nice choice of venue Jennifer. Hope you don't flounder in your search to pull it off. ;>) Be well.
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Jennifer L. |
Thank you so much for your suggestions I will definitely forward them to our photographer....very cute puns as well :)
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Jennifer L. Bales |
Jennifer, Why dont you hire a photographer with the capability to take underwater shots. There are some out there, or maybe a friend can use scuba gear and an underwater camera and get some shots. Jennifer
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