I decided to write these two articles to help you be aware of light sources at a wedding to help you correctly white balance your photos. To review a little from the first article, at a wedding you will find many sources of light that are competing with each other to be the main light in your image. If each of these light sources has a different color temperature then your photos will have a color cast and will not have a correct white balance.

Visualize a room that is illuminated by a fluorescent ceiling fixture, and in the corner of this room there is a table lamp with a tungsten bulb. These different light sources have vastly different color temperatures, and will give a color cast to your final image. You can keep this from happening by noticing the different sources of light around you. As I stated in the first article, you do not need a colored gel for your flash if you are using it to fill where the main light is daylight. Now I am going to talk about how to correctly choose a gel for your flash in more complex lighting situations.

Indoors you will normally be faced with one of three main light sources. These are: daylight, florescent, and tungsten. When you enter a room you will need to be able to identify the main source of light, then match it. I talked about daylight in the previous article. If your light source is florescent, they you will need to put a florescent gel on your flash and set the white balance on your camera to florescent lighting. Nowadays there are many different types of florescent lighting with different color temperatures. This means you will need to carry a few different florescent gels with you. Likewise, you will need a few different CTO gels to match different types of tungsten lighting. These tungsten gels are: full CTO, 1/2 CTO, and 1/4 CTO. As before, put a CTO gel on your flash and set the white balance on your camera to tungsten. With either a florescent gel or CTO gel, try different ones out and see what matches best the main light in the room.

When going into a room, if you see more than one source of light with different color temperature, you will need to try to fix the situation. Think about the opening scenario of a room lit by fluorescent lighting as well as candle light. In this case you can either switch off the fluorescent light, or blow out the candles if you want to be able to achieve correct white balance. Your best case scenario would be the candles would not be in frame, or are not throwing out enough light to affect your white balance. Likewise, if I were to go into a room with tungsten lighting I know I cannot just use my bare flash since it has a different white balance than the tungsten lighting. Therefore I would have to but on a CTO gel to match this tungsten light source.

Lastly, sunrise and sunset is not normal daylight! This means when shooting the wedding couple with the sunset in the background for example, you will need to use a CTO gel on your flash. Which one? As stated above, try different ones, and see which one best suits the light the sun is giving off at this particular time and place. Hope these tips help. Good Luck!

Kevin Heslin is one of the principle Wedding and Commercial photographers in Costa Rica. To see more of his photography tips click on his blog Costa Rica Wedding Photographer Or to see destination wedding photos from Costa Rica, or travel and cultural portraits from Central America click on his website Photography in Costa Rica. Free reprint available from: Wedding Photography Tips for Beginners – How to Properly White Balance Your Photos Part 2.

If you want to have a quiet party, ask guests to wear Mime Halloween costumes. Charade artists perform silent antics with not a word spoken. Comfortable to wear and easy to make mime costumes require nothing fancy or expensive. The clothing itself is simple and usually consists of black leggings and a black long sleeved snug knit shirt. The telltale facial makeup of mime Halloween costumes is what exposes your character to others.

Mime makeup is generally a must. Unlike clown make up, a basic style is easy to achieve. If you are not terribly handy with paints, especially on your own face, a simple white covering with a few black accents work well. You can paint your eyebrows in black and call it complete. Get more detailed by lining your lips or eyes as well. Some will also add little touches of personality, such as a painted on tear or a few shapes around the eyes. http://www.costumecauldron.com/Adult-Scary-Evil-Clown-Costumes.html

Clothing is simple and limited to very few pieces. The simplest mime Halloween costume could be made with black slacks and a black long sleeved tee. Add the facial make-up and gloves and begin your gestures. The traditional mime costume consists of slim black pants and a long sleeved knit shirt with horizontal black and white stripes. A red kerchief is often worn around the neck and a black French beret sits at angle on the head. In recent years some mime costumes have used a red and white shirt with horizontal stripes and that is also an accepted version.

If tradition isn’t your thing wear whatever you want. The face paint by itself will identify you as a mime. Of course, the lack of vocalization and the exaggerated body movements will help, too. http://www.costumecauldron.com/shop/halloween-costume/Clown–Mime-Costumes-title0-p-1-c-356.html

If you have sensitive skin or allergies you might opt to wear a mime mask rather than face paint. The problem with masks for this depiction is that facial expressions are so much a part of being a mime. Behind a mask you can grimace or smile all you like – and never be understood! Masks also limit your visibility and can become a safety issue.

Scary mimes are not unheard of, although the mime seems to have obtained less of the “terrifying factor” that clowns have. Perhaps it is the calming silence they use in their trade, or the toned down color schemes. Whatever it is, this silent charade artist generally lacks the scary connotations. Although if you wish to take your costume in that direction, by all means do so. You could be the first noose wearing or axe wielding mime!

If you want to convince, learn to play the part! Though the movements of a mime look simple and easy when done by an expert they are in fact carefully controlled use of the body in an expressive way. A search on Google will reveal a number of sources that will help you learn to act the part in your mime Halloween costume. You don’t need to become a master of the art but with a bit of knowledge and practice you can reproduce a few of the smooth movements of the professional mime.

I’m not suggesting you spend hours learning to be a mime or days practicing your routines. Who want to make a career out of their Halloween character? Just a quick view of how mimes move and a few minutes of practice here and there are all you need to be convincing.

For fun, comfort and ease of construction, mime Halloween costumes fill the bill. Whether traditional in black and white stripes or a bit more modern with red on white stripes, you always must have the wrist length white gloves and face paint (or a mask) to play the part. We should also point out that mimes are almost always quite slender. For a humorous twist a person of large girth dressed as a traditional mime could be great for laughs. Obviously, this would need to be someone not self conscious about his size or weight. Can you picture an overweight mime trying to reach past his stomach to open the imaginary door? Now that would be a funny clown Halloween costume. Edited by Hetsil Protage

Choose mime Halloween costumes online and weave a story with your white face and hands in clown Halloween costume

A wedding is a day to be remembered for a lifetime. It is a day where emotions are super charged and there is a feeling in the air that anything is possible. The photographer’s job is to capture this unique feeling at a wedding. Your photos should reflect that this feeling is contagious. This means that you need to have candid shots of not just your wedding couple, but also of the guests at the wedding.

Guest candid shots help convey the uniqueness of this day to the bride and groom. It could be a photo of an uncle teary eyed, or the shy, college roommate tearing it up on the dance floor that confirms their feelings that everything seemed different on their wedding day.

Be aware of everything that is going on around you is the best advice I can give for photographing great candid shots of the guests. Being aware will help you to be able to expect what is going to happen before it happens. This is the key to taking candids.

An example of knowing what to expect during the ceremony: when the priest is talking to the bride and groom. You should get your normal couple shots of the bridal couple at this point. Great. But for the next few minutes you know that the priest will keep talking, and the bride and groom are pretty much going to look the same. This is the time to turn around and see what the guests are doing.

You need to keep in mind though that these guest shots need to be candid. My method for capturing a candid shot at this point in the service is by turning around just looking around casually at what the guests are doing. I do this in a casual way so that none of the guests know that I am choosing them for a photo opp. As I am facing forward I am mentally composing the image, and at the same time adjusting the settings on my camera for the shot. I then quickly turn around and shoot before anyone has anytime to realize what I am doing.

To use another example of knowing the wedding flow to be able to anticipate candid photo opps is when the music starts at a reception. Normally people are still too shy to start dancing, but because you are the super wedding photographer you know that the children at this reception are going to run out and play on the dance floor. This is because it’s finally time where they don’t have to sit still and listen to speeches and they can get rid of all the pent up energy. As you are walking over to them I hope you are adjusting your camera to high speed settings. Kids are always great for candid shots. This means it is a good idea to kind of know where they are in the back of your mind as you are getting other shots. If you see something out of the corner of your eye, and there is a lull, go shoot it. If you do this you’ll get some great shots.

Try these tips at your next wedding. Thanks for reading!

Kevin Heslin is one of the leading Wedding and Commercial Photographers in Costa Rica. Besides commercial and wedding photography, Kevin also specializes in Travel and Cultural Portraits. To see more photo tips click on his blog Costa Rica Photographer Or to see photos of his weddings in Costa Rica, or travel and cultural photography in Central America check out his website Costa Rica Photography. This article, Make Your Wedding Photos Unique by Capturing Great Candids of Your Guests is available for free reprint.

Taking pictures at weddings can be a monumental task as a wedding can last many hours at a time. Due to this, you could be taking pictures with many different sources of light. These different light sources will influence the color hues of you photos. Imagine the different color cast that may appear in photos taken in a candlelit church versus on the dance floor at the reception. In this first article I will give you some tips to be able to identify and utilize different light sources, as well as give you some techniques to maintain a correct white balance in common situations.

The best tip I can give you to maintain proper white balance is to make sure you take pictures in RAW format. This RAW format is a lot more efficient than Jpg. In a Jpg photo, the white balance is already set from when you shot the image in your camera. But when shooting in RAW, it doesn’t matter what white balance you had set in you camera. You can change it later in post production. Similarly, there is often a tool for choosing your white balance in any RAW editing program. To use this tool, just choose the white balance tool, then choose a part of your image that you think should be white. The advantage to shooting a wedding is that most of the time you can just click on the bride’s white dress. If the dress happens to be off white or another color, you can always click on the men’s white collars. This tool has its limits though; it will only work if there is just one light source. Therefore you always need to have a plan B.

The second tip I can offer you is to pay attention to your light sources. It is easy to recognize when your light source is sunlight, but also recognize when your light source is tungsten or fluorescent. Furthermore, you need to make sure there are not competing light sources when possible. This means if you are using a fill flash, it may need to be gelled to match your main light source.

In practice this is easier than it sounds. Your flash, without gels, is calibrated to match the color temperature of normal daylight. This means you will not need any type of gel on your flash if you are using it as fill light outside during regular daylight hours, that is, not sunrise or sunset. This is also true if you are taking interior shots where your main source of light is window light. This is a common scenario to find yourself in when you are taking pictures of the bride getting ready. This is because it is early on in the day and the natural window light is probably your best source of light. If you find that there are competing sources of light like little lamps however, you may need to switch them off, as they will not match your main light, nor your flash.

I hope these techniques will help you to begin to be able to identify the main sources of light at a wedding. In the second article on white balance, I will discuss proper white balance in more complex scenarios.

Kevin Heslin is one of the best Wedding and Commercial Photographers in Costa Rica. If you would like to see more of his photography tips check out his blog Costa Rica Photographer that is filled with posts on lighting, composition and other techniques. Or to see his images of destination weddings or his culture and travel photography, check out his website Costa Rica Wedding Photographer. Also published at Properly White Balancing Your Photos Part I – Wedding Photography Tips for Beginners.