People ask what the hardest thing to photograph at a Mitzvah is. It’s not the low light or the fast dancing — it’s two specific moments that happen once, fast, and never the same way twice. Here’s how we shoot them.
The hora is a thirty-second window
The chair goes up, the circle spins, the honoree is holding a napkin with a parent on the other end, everyone is singing, and then it’s over. There is no second take. We position before the music starts — usually one photographer low and wide to get the whole circle and the lift, a second up higher or on the balcony if there is one for the top-down frame.
The trick is anticipation: the chair almost always goes up on the same beat, so we’re focused and ready a bar early. We’re also watching the faces below the chair — grandparents singing, a little cousin wide-eyed — because those frames often outlast the lift shot itself.
Candle lighting is the emotional core
Each candle is a short speech and a call-up: a grandparent, a coach, a group of friends, a sibling. For the photographs, we work two angles at once — one on the people being called as they walk up and react, one tight on the honoree’s face in the candlelight between candles. That in-between beat, when they look out and find the person, is the frame parents ask for.
It helps enormously to have the candle-lighting order and the names in advance, so we know who’s coming from which table and can be turned the right way before they stand up.
Light, and why we don’t kill it with flash
Both moments live on their own light — party wash on the hora, candle glow on the cake. Blasting direct flash flattens all of that into a snapshot. We shoot mostly with the room’s light and use flash sparingly and bounced, so the photographs still feel like the room felt. Fast lenses and cameras that hold up in the dark do most of the work.
One team, three records of the same moment
The hora and the candle lighting are also the moments families most want on film and, for relatives who couldn’t travel, on the live stream. When the same studio runs photo, video and streaming, the camera operators aren’t fighting for the same three feet of floor — the positions are planned together beforehand.
Richard Black Studio covers weddings, Bar & Bat Mitzvahs, Sweet 15 & 16 celebrations and special events across Long Island and New York — photography, films and professional live streaming from one team. Tell us what you’re planning and we’ll send availability and a quote.