Hilton Light Painting Wedding Photograph
Here’s the story behind Kevin and Stephanie’s Hilton light painting wedding photograph that we created for them at their September 30th wedding.
Joannie and I have officially added light painting at weddings to our wedding photography coverage. What started as something small has now turned into something much bigger. Now, brides and grooms are now seeing our unique light painted wedding photographs popping up on the internet. Whenever we can, we try to create a light painting at a wedding.
The World’s Only Light Painting Wedding Photographers
As far as I can tell, nobody else is creating these light paintings at weddings. When Google searching for wedding light painting, wedding photographers who light paint, or light painted wedding photographs, Joannie and I appear to be the only light painting wedding photographers in the United States, or anywhere else for that matter. Yes, there are many wedding photographers doing images with sparklers, or setting steel wool on fire, but nothing like this.
Our goal, for the time being, is to create a few more wedding light painting samples for our portfolio. Then we will officially add it to one or more of our Wedding Collections for 2018 and beyond. Light painting is not just limited to wedding photography either, I’ve already created one engagement portrait light painting, and I’ve got another one planned very soon too. It’s also pretty cool for cars, motorcycles and other cool stuff.
Kevin and Stephanie in their pre-light painting photo.
Hilton Minneapolis Bloomington Light Painted Wedding Photograph
I mentioned to Kevin and Stephanie that I’d like to try something cool with them once they didn’t need us anymore. They both agreed to give it a try, and so once we completed our coverage of their first dances, we hit the lobby of the Hilton Minneapolis Bloomington. This would be our try our first indoor light painting at a wedding. Since we’ve never tried light painting indoors at a wedding, I made them no guarantee that it might even work out. Somebody’s got to be the first, right?
After looking over the outside of the hotel (it’s pretty much a parking lot), I decide on the lobby stairs for Kevin and Stephanie’s wedding light painting. There are some really cool textures there. Wood on one wall, and stone slabs with light pockets on another. Lots of glass on the stairs (I wasn’t so sure about all that glass).
Since the lobby was kind of busy on a Saturday night, I choose upstairs looking down to light paint their scene. That way, we weren’t in the way.
Time To Create The Hilton Light Painting Wedding Photograph
Once we were all set up, it was time to add the King and Queen to the setting! I enlisted Jason, one of Kevin’s groomsmen, to hold a kicker light for us. Joannie held another one on the other side. Upstairs we had one of our powerful WITSTRO MoLight AD360II-C strobes equipped with a GoMo 48″ Octa Softbox. It gave us a nice, soft light on Kevin and Stephanie. Once we had our beginning image in the can, Kevin and Stephanie went back to their party!
Kevin and Stephanie told us to grab a couple of cold ones, and we got to light painting. Since I was using our Canon 15mm Fisheye lens, I even had to light paint down the hallway towards the guest rooms. Joannie would fire the camera with an App that I have on my iPhone. I ran up and down the stairs lighting it from many angles.
Since there was so much going on, and so many places where we could get unwanted reflections, we took over 230 separate images for this light painting. I only had to use about 60 of them to complete the wedding light painting.
In the process, we nearly wiped out the battery pack on the WITSTRO MoLight AD360II-C! It had been in use all day long, from the images we created at The Japanese Garden that afternoon, to the reception, and then dance coverage. That battery pack put in a full day!
Well, you’ve seen the starting image before light painting, so here’s the completed image:
Kevin and Stephanie’s completed light painting.
Pretty cool isn’t it? Big thanks to Kevin and Stephanie for giving it a try with us. Now they’ve got something pretty unique to enjoy for many years to come! – M&J