LOW LIGHT & CANDLE LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
So your couple have picked the venue, set the vibe through countless hours of planning and have decided to go with a candle lit venue. Whilst this look amazing in real life it can be hard to capture the mood and atmosphere that candle light gives in an image, The reason for this is candles give off a very small amount of light that just kisses small areas of a room with a lovely soft warm glow, this means small pockets of the space will have a lovely warm light while other areas of the room will have very limited to no light at all.
Your first instinct may be to light up the scene with off camera flash of some sort, whilst this will add more light to the scene and help get you a sharper over all image it has the potential to completely over power the light from the candles and ultimately change the mood & vibe your couple has spent all that time and effort setting up, this isn’t ideal when your couple have hired you to capture the day as planned and not to completely change the mood of the space. First off, natural light is always better than artificial light so if you can position people in the light source DO IT and make the most of the natural light. finding a space in the venue that’s not going to impact the guest experience and just wait for people to enter the best pockets of light this is a great way to capture everyone in the best possible light without being to much of a known presence. Remember this day is about your couple and the guests the less of a visible presence you can have on the day the better, following this will lead to better candid images and a more relaxed guest experience. 
Sometime no matter how hard to try the light is just to low to capture the images you want without boosting you ISO to unusable levels or dropping your shutter speed to a point where everyone is starting to blur, at this time flash is the only option left. If you must use flash you will want to use a CTO gel to best match the colour temperature of the room, using a CTO gel will help you preserve the atmosphere of the space better than bear flash that can cast a cold blue light on a scene this will also save you time in post production fixing the colour temperature of your images. Never use direct flash on your subject, always look to bounce off something like a wall or ceiling this will essentially turn the wall or ceiling in to a giant soft box giving you much softer light. 
points to take away
Always use natural light first if possibleDon’t over power the space with constant flashIt’s ok to wait for people to step in to the good lightIf you must use flash add a CTO gel to match your sceneBounce your flash
I hope this was of some use to you, give me a follow on Instagram @imagination_photo1 and on Facebook imagination photographers Remember to have fun and every day is the perfect day to create something new.
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