The Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center, Waterloo: The Problem, and Four Ways Out

A room designed to suit anything looks like nothing. That is the problem, and it has four solutions.

A convention centre is the most honest venue type there is about what it wants to be: a neutral container that can host a trade show on Tuesday and a wedding on Saturday. Neutrality is the product.

For a photographer that produces one clear problem. The rooms are pale, evenly lit from above, hard-surfaced and featureless, which means there is nothing to stand a subject against — the wall behind a face is exactly as bright as the face, the picture flattens, and nothing in the room says where it was taken.

None of that is recoverable afterwards, because the information was never recorded. But there are four ways out, all of them reliable, and none of them requires the building to be something it is not.

We have not photographed a wedding at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center; convention facilities behave consistently. Which spaces are included, whether there is outdoor or riverside access and whether the lighting is adjustable are questions for their team.

The Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center at a glance

Where	Waterloo, Iowa
The problem	Pale, evenly lit, featureless rooms with nothing to stand against
Way one	Build separation geometrically: distance, the dark end, depth behind
Way two	Out-light the room. Way three: find the building’s real features
Way four	Go outside — and here that means the river

Ways one and two: geometry, and light

The first way out is geometric and it costs nothing but attention. A subject standing a metre from a pale wall has no separation; the same subject standing five metres from it, with the camera at the same distance from them, has a background that is measurably darker because light falls off with distance — and that difference is the whole of the effect.

Three variants of the same idea all work. Distance, as above. The dark end of the room, because every evenly lit room is in fact unevenly lit and one end is always half a stop to a stop down — walking the room and finding it takes two minutes. And depth behind, which means composing so the background is a corridor, an open doorway or a further room rather than a near wall, because depth darkens by itself.

The second way out is photometric: make the subject brighter than the room. The eye goes to the brightest thing in a frame, so a face half a stop to a stop above its background holds attention regardless of how featureless that background is. It is the most controllable of the four because it does not depend on the room’s geometry at all.

In practice that is one source off the camera axis at face height, in a modifier large enough to be soft at working distance, gelled to match the dominant fitting colour and with white balance set to the gel.

That gel matters more in a convention facility than in most buildings, because the lighting in these spaces is a mixture of whatever has been installed and replaced over the years — fluorescent, LED of varying quality, warmer decorative fittings in the pre-function areas, and any coloured uplighting brought in for the event. Three temperatures on one face cannot be reconciled afterwards, so pick the one that should be correct, set white balance to it, and switch off or overpower whatever else reaches skin.

Coloured uplighting is usually the worst of it and frequently the easiest thing to have turned off for ten minutes, which is a reasonable request rather than a compromise.

The other lighting fact worth establishing on arrival is whether bounce works. Ballroom and exhibition ceilings are typically four metres or more, which returns very little and colours what it does return; pre-function areas, corridors and meeting rooms frequently have lower ceilings where a bounced source is a very large soft one. One test frame in each space is thirty seconds well spent, and it changes what has to be carried.

And the overhead direction is the underlying problem behind all of this. Dense downlighting shadows eye sockets and cuts a hard line under every chin, and no exposure correction fixes it — direction does, which is why a single side-placed source improves every face in the building at once.

Ways three and four: real features, and outside

The third way out is to find the building’s actual features, and every convention facility has them even when the main rooms do not. The candidates are consistent: a glazed entrance or atrium, which is the only large daylight source in the building; a stair, which gives elevation, a line for a descent and a vertical composition with rows of people; a long corridor, which gives depth and repetition and is the cheapest separation available anywhere; and a service or back-of-house area, which is frequently the most characterful space in a neutral building.

Those four are worth ten minutes of looking on arrival, and between them they carry a meaningful part of a gallery. The stair in particular is the single best architectural asset in most convention centres, and it needs light from one side rather than from above — overhead light on a stair puts eye sockets in shadow on every face at once.

A glazed entrance or atrium deserves separate treatment, because it is genuinely the best light in the building and it behaves like a very large window. The conditions are the usual ones: shaded side or overcast rather than direct sun, which turns a soft source into a hard one with a hard edge; and three metres or so back from the glass, so the fall-off is even across a group rather than dropping off the far side of it.

Tinted glazing is worth checking with one frame, because a lot of commercial glass is coated for solar control and throws a localised green or blue cast onto anything near it that global white balance cannot remove.

The fourth way out is to go outside, and in Waterloo that means the river. The city sits on the Cedar, and a riverside position is the only exterior background that is neither parking nor more building — water reflects, doubles whatever is lit, and gives depth and a natural line.

It also solves the problem the building poses most directly: nothing about a neutral interior says where the day happened, and a frame with a river and a low prairie horizon in it does.

Camera height is the governing variable at any water. Low, looking across the surface, and the water is a mirror reflecting sky and whatever is standing beyond; high, looking down, and it is transparent. Half a metre of camera height changes the character of the frame completely, and the low position is usually the good one.

The two exterior windows are the last hour of daylight, which rakes the water and any facade, and the twenty-five to forty minutes after sunset, when sky and lit building sit at the same brightness. Since the interior does not change through the day, both are affordable — nothing indoors is lost by going out.

• Five metres off the wall, or the dark end of the room, or depth behind
• One gelled source, a stop above the room; ask for the uplighting off
• Ten minutes finds the atrium, the stair, the corridor and the back-of-house
• Light a stair from one side; overhead shadows every eye socket
• Go to the river — it is the only exterior background with anything in it

Iowa's year, and what it changes

The landscape around Waterloo has very little relief, which has one consistent effect on every outdoor frame: the horizon is low and open, so sky occupies more of a wide picture than it does in hilly country. That makes the sky the main variable rather than a backdrop, and it means a dramatic sky is worth going outside for in a way it is not somewhere with hills to look at instead.

The seasons are four emphatic ones, with one of the larger annual temperature ranges in the country, and each changes the outdoor options substantially.

Summer is hot and genuinely humid, and the humidity is the photographic fact rather than the heat. Moist air scatters light, which softens shadows and flattens distance slightly — a gift for faces, a nuisance for long views across open country. Severe afternoon thunderstorms are a real possibility from late spring through summer, which at an entirely indoor venue costs a decision rather than a picture, but which does mean the riverside excursion needs a fallback.

The humid fogging problem is the equipment issue that matters most here. A body carried from an air-conditioned interior into July air fogs on every surface at once and does not clear quickly in high humidity — so a bag should be opened twenty minutes before going out rather than at the door. At a convention facility, where the air conditioning is set for a full exhibition hall, the temperature difference is larger than at most venues.

Autumn is the best light of the year. The humidity drops, the air clears, the cover along the river turns, and low sun arrives at a civilised hour; mid-to-late October is the usual window. The surrounding farmland matters too if any frame includes it: dense tall green through September, then open stubble with warm colour and raking texture after the October harvest — two completely different backgrounds from the same standing position.

Winter is cold and frequently overcast, which is less of a disadvantage than it sounds. Overcast is the best soft source there is, and a grey January day gives even, shadowless light that flatters faces and saturates colour — including through a glazed atrium, where it removes the direct-sun problem entirely.

Snow is the compensation twice over. Outdoors it is the best natural fill available, lifting exactly the shadows a low sun carves while fooling a meter by about two stops. Indoors it turns the ground into an enormous reflector, so a glazed entrance or atrium gives softer, brighter and more even light in February than at any other time of year — which in a building whose only real daylight is that glazing makes winter the season it performs best.

The short December day is the constraint: at this latitude sunset falls in the middle of the afternoon, which compresses the outdoor block into a couple of hours. At a venue where every indoor frame is movable, that is entirely manageable as long as it is planned rather than discovered.

More frames from The Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center

The Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center wedding photography: common questions

What is the central problem at a convention centre?

Neutrality. Pale, evenly lit, featureless rooms give a subject nothing to stand against, and nothing in the frame says where it was taken.

What is the cheapest fix?

Geometry. Five metres off the wall, the darker end of the room, or a background that is depth — a corridor or doorway — rather than a near surface.

How much brighter should a face be?

Half a stop to a stop above the background. That is enough to hold the eye without making the room disappear.

Which real features are worth finding?

A glazed entrance or atrium, a stair, a long corridor, and the back-of-house. Ten minutes on arrival locates all four.

Does bounce flash work?

In the pre-function areas, corridors and meeting rooms usually yes; in the halls, usually not. One test frame per space settles it.

Why go to the river?

Because it is the only exterior background that is neither parking nor more building, and because it says where the day happened.

More Iowa venue guides

We are writing a photographer’s guide to every venue we would happily shoot in Iowa. Here are three more, plus the full index:

• The Grout Museum District, Waterloo: A Venue Built to Preserve
• The Isle Casino Hotel, Waterloo: Field Notes on a Windowless Venue
• The Lost Island Waterpark, Waterloo: What It Suits, and What It Does Not

All Iowa →

Planning a wedding at The Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center?

Four ways out, all reliable. Tell us your date and we will use all four.

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