Saturday I was at a church I had photographed many times. The altar area is large, under lit, and far from the back wall. This all leads up to a black hole for the altar return groups. Black tuxes and black hair will fade into the background and no amount of dragging the shutter will help. Long before you lighten the back wall the ambient on the front area will overpower your mainlight.
Soooooo, I was determined to do something different. I wanted to make these groups "pop" from the dark (even black) background. Because I had so much depth, I could get two lights behind and to the sides of the groups. I put two SB28 speedlight set to 1/4 power about 20 feet behind and just out of frame. I aimed them for the middle of the groups. This gave me the nice rim-lighting you see on the shoulders of the tuxedos and the hair.
