One Piece of Equipment Every Wedding Photographer Should Have in the Bag

Even tough plenty of people think that being a photographer is extremely easy and simple, everyone from the photography industry are very aware of the traps this job can bring. One of the most often one is working at the venues with very bad, or no light at all. It is easy to arrive at weddings with bunch of additional lighting equipment, but what to do when you are traveling as a destination wedding photographer and the number of your luggage bags (read: equipment) is limited?

​There is a piece of equipment I never leave without, no matter where I have to travel and photograph...

Some of you who are following me regularly have noticed that I am a Phottix user and I am working with  their lighting equipment to enhance my photographs, like the ones from fashion editorial where I used Phottix Indra, or the wedding in Cyprus where the venue was small and I needed less power, where Phottix Mitros was a perfect tool.

This time, I want to share how I used this little, yet very powerful lighting source in my recent destination wedding in Lithuania. As I have previously said, I travel with limited gear, but this flash is my favourite travelling companion.

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​As you can see on this image, my beautiful newlyweds were suppose to have a champagne reception outside their venue. This photo was taken with ambient light only and even tough there were lit candles, I thought there is something missing. I wanted to show flower decorations more, as they have perfectly blended in with the glow of the glasses. 

I took 2 Phottix Mitros flashes attached to Odin transmitters, and positioned them on both sides of the table, allowing me freedom of moving wherever I like while still having flowers popping out.
You can already see a huge difference those little things have done!
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​Even tough this set up gave me lovely light, I wanted bit different result... We all have phones with us all the time, and most of them are having a torch light option, or something similar... I have asked my friend and wedding planner Ugne to leave her smartphone behind the glasses with light option on, to add just a tiny spark on the glasses from behind. I have found an angle where I didn't see any piece of equipment (or any phones :)) to take my final photo, so no Photoshop was used here.

And voila, this is how my final photo looks like!
It took me 2 minutes to prepare flashes and 10 seconds to position smartphone.  

​I think you can agree with me that the end result is much better then the initial one, yet I didn't use any complicated or extremely expensive equipment, assistant or Photoshop.
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Phottix Mitros is my go-to photography tool that gets me the pictures I want, everytime and everywhere. 
If you don't have Mitros in your bag yet, I am sure you will soon! :)

​Keep creating,

Martina.