How to shoot the dancefloor
PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS
HOW TO SHOOT THE DANCEFLOOR
Learning how to shoot the dancefloor is one of the most challenging aspects of being a wedding photographer. It’s also one of the most fun. The wedding party is one of my favourite parts of a wedding day. All the formalities are out of the way, and everyone is ready to let their hair down and go wild on the dancefloor.
This guide will explain a bit about how to shoot the dancefloor, or perhaps more accurately how I shoot the dancefloor. There are many other ways to approach this – these are just some of my tried and tested methods.
HOW TO SHOOT THE FIRST DANCE
The first dance is where most wedding parties get started, and can consist of anything from a slightly embarrassed shuffle for a few seconds, to an epic choreographed performance that lasts an entire song. Either way, it helps to be prepared and set up in advance to capture this – you may only have a few seconds to get the shots you need!
USING OFF-CAMERA FLASH
The first thing to point out is that dancefloors come in all shapes and sizes. You might have the luxury of an entire ballroom, or be crammed into a shoebox sized room, elbow to elbow with guests eager to see the action. I find that the set up that tends to work in most situations is the one I’ve used in the pictures shown here, which is to have one flash on-camera, and two behind the couple (one in each corner of the room). Obviously to do this you will need the ability to somehow trigger off-camera flash, which can be done either by using a trigger or a flash with built in capabilities.
The flashes I use and highly recommend are made by Godox. I use a Godox V1 on-camera which I use to trigger two off-camera V860ii flashguns, mounted on light stands (any will do, but the ones I use are these made by KF Concept). Bear in mind these need to be stable, and placed in a location where they will not cause a trip hazard (you also don’t want them to be knocked over with expensive flashguns on the top – believe me I’ve learned this the hard way!) You also need to consider lens choice. I usually go with a 16mm wide angle prime (24mm full frame equivalent) as this is wide enough to include both the rear flashes which light up the guests nicely.
STAYING IN FOCUS IN THE DARK
Another important point to note is that in most cases the dancefloor is going to be pretty dark. This can make it a challenge for your camera to autofocus, and when shooting moving subjects this can be a problem. The technique I prefer to use to address this is zone focusing. To do this effectively, you need to shoot at a small aperture (my starting point for the dancefloor is f11). You then figure out where you will be standing during the first dance, and also where the couple will be. Then, set your focus to a point the same distance away. It doesn’t have to be exact, as when shooting at such small apertures, your focal plane is deep enough to allow some margin for error.
Once you’ve done this, you’re then going to want to prevent your camera from attempting to refocus each time you press the shutter. There are several ways to do this. My preferred method is to use back button focusing, so I use different buttons to focus and press the shutter (explaining this is in more detail is probably for another blog post!) or alternatively you can switch to manual focus. Some cameras allow you to do this by a switch on either the lens or camera, others may require you to go into the camera settings.
LIGHT ‘EM UP, BABY
The next thing to do is to set the power output for the flashes. My starting point for this is to set the two rear flashes to 1/4 power, and the one camera flash to 1/8. There are several things which affect this, such as the distance between myself and the couple and the level of ambient light in the room. It is therefore important to test this before your couple make their entrance (I usually find there will be a few kids or guests throwing a few shapes which make good target practice!) If the light is too much, or not enough, you can adjust accordingly.
Another reason why I like to use a small aperture is so it creates the ‘starburst’ effect as seen below; use anything less than about f9 and those starbursts will start to become blobs of light which (in my opinion) don’t look so nice. I also like to use the ‘zoom’ option on the on-camera flash to zoom right in – this helps to isolate the couple and make them stand out.
Now all you need is a pair of newlyweds to burst in and you can snap away! But be warned – the couple may not dance where you’re expecting them to unless you have a quick word beforehand to let them know where they should go. Consider also that your flashes may require some recycle time between shots – so try to time those twirls and dips! With practice, you don’t even need to look at the camera, you can just watch the couple to help you capture the best moments.
SHOOTING THE DANCEFLOOR
Once the first dance is complete, it’s usually time for an explosion of action on the dancefloor. I usually grab a few shots using the same setup as I used for the first dance, before switching to the next technique – dragging the shutter.
The basic principles of this technique are to use a longer exposure to capture trails of light created by the light sources in the room, while simultaneously capturing the action on the dancefloor with your flash. Once you’ve pressed the shutter and the flash has frozen the action, you then move the camera to create the light trails. I like to use this method as I feel it adds a bit of drama to the dancefloor shots, and helps add to the sense of movement and vibrancy.
CAMERA SETTINGS FOR SHUTTER DRAG
Getting the camera settings correct for shutter drag can take a little trial and error, as there are several things which can affect this. The first, and probably most important thing to consider is the amount of ambient light there is. To create the most effective shutter drag images, you need to eliminate as much ambient light from the photo as possible, without eliminating so much that you also remove the light created for the light trails.
As you’ll be using a longer exposure, you’ll need to close down your aperture. As with the first dance, I usually start at f11 and go from there. The other advantage of this is that it gives you that large depth of field again, so once you have set your focus you shouldn’t need to keep refocusing – you don’t want to have to keep grabbing focus when granny is giving it large to ‘Proud Mary’ right in front of you.
To capture the light trails, you’re going to need to set a shutter speed of somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 a second. Anything longer than that and you’ll end up with light trails that are too long and your images will look too messy. Before you move on to the next step which is setting up the flash, you can take a couple of test shots to see how the light trails look. What you’re looking for here is a dark image containing nothing but light trails – you want to be able to hardly see any movement from people on the dancefloor.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT FLASH SETTING
Next, you’ll need to choose the correct flash setting to freeze the action on the dancefloor. For shutter drag, I usually only use on-camera flash, pointed directly at the subjects, so I usually turn off the two flashes I have placed in the corners. You can experiment with leaving them on also – if it’s a busy dancefloor sometimes it’s good to capture more background action.
There are a few important things to consider here. First, because you have your aperture closed right down, you’re going to need the power on your flash to be quite high. The problem here is, you don’t want to be blasting full power flash in peoples’ faces. You won’t make yourself popular by scorching retinas. Also, if you’re firing away on full power, your flash will overheat and take longer to recycle.
To combat this, you can increase your ISO. Obviously this is going to also increase the amount of ambient light that will be visible in your photos, so you need to find a balance that works. I usually find that setting your ISO to around 400 or 800 will enable you to use a flash power of either 1/4 or 1/8 without making too much difference to your ambient light.
Bear in mind that adjusting your shutter speed is going to have no effect on your flash, so if the ambient is too much you can try reducing the shutter speed a little (but not too much or you’ll have no light trails!) Some people like to leave the flash in TTL, my experience of this is that it tends to give inconsistent results so prefer to find the correct setting manually.
There is also some debate over whether it’s best to use front-curtain or rear-curtain sync (so the flash fires at either the start or the end of the exposure). For shutter drag, I personally don’t see any advantage of using rear-curtain sync. You’re going to be waving the camera all over the place to capture the light trails, so you don’t want to be thinking about having it pointed in the right place at the end of the exposure to capture the action. Also it’s way easier to time the moment you want to capture when you press the shutter, rather than guessing when the flash is going to fire.
BEST CONDITIONS FOR SHUTTER DRAG
Now you have the camera and flash set up, there are just a few other things to consider. I tend to find the best dancefloors for shutter drag are ones which are the darkest, without too may bright lights. Sometimes the DJ or band will have lights which illuminate people on the dancefloor. If this is too much they will remain lit for the full duration of your exposure, creating a blurry mess.
If these lights are too much, you could ask them to keep them off for 20 minutes or so after first dance. They are usually more than happy to accommodate this. Obviously you also need lots of small light sources to create your light trails. Fairy lights are great, windows, not so much.
Now the fun part – creating those light trails! You need to bear in mind here where the light sources are in your image. If your subject has lots of light sources on the left as they appear in the image, you don’t want to move the camera to your left during the exposure as the light trails will then go over the top of the subject. If the light sources are either side, you can try panning the camera down to avoid this.
Be creative with your camera movements – a bit of wiggling while panning tends to produce better results than straight lines. After a bit of trial and error you can usually find a ‘sweet spot’ on the dancefloor, which is usually shooting into the darkest part with the most small light sources in the background.
WEDDING PARTY
GALLERY
Some of my favourite images from the dancefloor
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