BTS: Maui Wedding Video

BTS: Maui Wedding Video

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Life is all about time, or rather the lack of, right? Time is always the most scarce resource, even if you have all the time in the world, others around you, or even mother nature does not. As a photographer, “good light” naturally only happens in small fragments of time, and we counter this by using off-camera light, even when we don’t need to in order to get even “better” light. I think we need to put all our cancer curing resources and task them into figuring out how to extend really nice sunsets to say… twice as long (I kid…. but seriously).

Here is a behind the scenes video I cut together today, it showcases a little bit of the stuff we did while we were running around the island.

[jwplayer mediaid=”4428″ width=700 height=418]

The time in Maui absolutely flew by. I try not to think about it, as every bone in my body wants to be laying on that beach again. Time is even more precious when you are a bride and groom, celebrating a wedding event in such an awesome location. My goal when I got there was to take up as little time of Leeann and Daymeon’s as I possibly could, all while getting some great images. Enter the hotshoe flashes and the Lastolite ezybox softbox.

Plane rides are no fun, packing a bunch of studio lights is no fun, and… I wanted to have some fun on this trip, dangit! So, I left all the big boy lights at home, and compromised lighting quality and power for speed, weight, and convenience. Luckily, when traveling to a warm spot like Maui, you don’t have to pack much in the way of clothes, so I used the rest of the space in my suitcase for light stands, mobile softboxes, etc, you know… stuff everyone takes on plane rides. My camera bag BARELY fit in the overhead, and the flight attendants could have easily told me I needed to check it. I’m sorry, “check” my livelihood, my entire business in a bag… leave it in the hands of some case chucker? Glad that didn’t get ugly.

I was able to cut my shooting time in half (easily), by simply changing my lighting tools from big studio strobes to hotshoe flashes. Again, not my preference, but acceptable for what I was trying to pull off. I couldn’t muscle out the sun if I wanted to with the tiny lights, so that limited my shooting times even greater, but speed and agility were on my side for this go-around, and that was needed a lot more than an extra punch in lighting power. The ezybox light modifier is light and easy to hold, so lighting assistants can simply handhold and walk with it. In fact, we did more handhold lighting that we did with a light stand.

Granted I stole the newlyweds for no more than 15 minutes at a time at any point in the trip, I’d say we came away with some good shots. Of course, I couldn’t have done it without Alice. Without her assisting the ENTIRE trip, I couldn’t have got the shots I did. A good assistant is priceless, especially in time crunches, and without her literally reading my mind so that we could stay on pace, we would have lost a lot of shots and increased shooting time. Another big thanks to Andy, who captured the video you see up top.

More to come…