Its belated…then again, everything seems to be in my life right now. However, I wanted to make a shoutout to love. Its BEAUTIFUL…truly.
YOU two are beautiful…your love is so fun, unique only to you, and contagious! Enjoy your images, and your full gallery moments away…
The first look…how I LOVE when couples see eachother before the ceremony. The sweet emotions I can capture are timeless. My most favorite image of Ben and I on our wedding day is a black and white of me fixing his tie while he’s looking down at me. There are people all around us, its in the middle of the formal shots, and we are stealing a moment. Its not completely passionate, not posed…just us…being us…loving together, learning together, and starting our life as friends, lovers, companions…just being. Its part of what pushes me to shoot this way, to capture the “unplanned” moments as well. I find they are the ones that make the “blog posts” more often than the posed formal shots.
You tell me…did the “reverend” in the background add to the image or take away from it. Only the two of you will ever know the answer…
I have to admitt, I do love a little “tint” to my black and whites. I try to give them both ways…but I seem to fancy a hint of brown. Maybe its the “rustic elegant” side of me. Regardless, I adore this shot. Yes, I say adore alot. I know…I’m working on it.
AND, for “funsies”…just a bit of a different edit. I love giving different edits of the same image to brides and then letting them choose which they love the most. Loving the romantic feeling of these…
I get asked “technical” questions through emails alot. I’m going to try to post some “broad” answers to some of these questions in each of my posts. SO, starting now, all these images were taken with my Mark II, 50 mm 1.4 lens. ISO was at 100 (lots of nice clouds) in Midway that day…with an ap anywhere from 1.8 to 6.3. Some of these shots had off camera flash fired from camera right dialed up to about a +2 just to give directional light and a little fill flash. All were shot in RAW. My shutter was anywhere from 100-400 depending on the moving clouds and how low my aperture was to help achieve the bokeh in the background. I concetrate on holding very still and usually hold my camera. However, I do use a tripod for the large formal shots. Ofcourse, for the moving shots of them seeing eachother for the first time, I kept my shutter speed higher and let my aperture fall a bit. I take these further back and then crop in when needed. Because it was about 3pm, with just a small amount of clouds, I was able to keep my iso at 100 without the use of too much OCF and was able to get nice directional lighting without too much flash effort. I sought out shady areas and kept them just at the edge of the shade so I wouldn’t need to worry too much if the clouds decided to part and let in more light. I really like shady spots with deeper shade in the background for these type of shots, capturing the emotion ,without posing too much, I like to keep people at the edge of my shade so that the deeper shade pops them out of the image. I do very minimal photoshopping to the background because of this. I hope that helps a bit. I know its basic, and not specific, but it might help point those who have been asking questions lately in the right direction. I adore soft natural light and will use it over flash (and then compensate in CS4 with the proper tools) for crispness and sharpness whenever possible. Its just what I prefer, but doesn’t mean it is the absolute only way to do it. I see many wedding photographers that never turn off their flash, and I like their images very much. This is just the way I do it because of my understanding of photoshop and because I really don’t like to wait for my flash to recycle…I usually miss alot more of the “touchy feely” moments when I’ve done it this way. There you have it….please email me with questions and let me know if this helped.
AND, just as I say I prefer to use natural lighting, I’ll show some of the off camera flash done in these amazing ice sculptures after the ceremony. It was dark…it was cold…it was very very slippery, but these beauties were so unique to this amazing venue that we had to steal away from the reception for just a bit. I edited these in a variety of ways, but I thought the black and white and “subdued” tones were fun together.
AND…what would a wedding post be without a few “candids” from the nights events. I always shoot till the “party ends” and this party went till the very end. If any of you have ever worked with Laughing Gravy, you know how insanely amazing he is at getting the party moving. Here’s proof of just how good he is…making grown men do THIS. I laughed so hard when these came up on the screen. You boys were troopers…TROOPERS! GO YMCA!
ALSO…I am in love with, and have always been in love with Pottery Barn. There’s something about the relaxed beauty of their rooms, fabrics, furniture…etc, that has always been so appealing to me. Regardless, if you ever want some inspiration on how to use your pictures (new and old) to really define you and make an amazing wall gallery, thumb threw their catalogue or website. Its just fabulous for any stage of life.
