The First Wedding
So here they are. Some of my favorites from shooting my first wedding. I showed them to the happy couple today so now I'll show them to all both of you :).
I choose these because they are definitely my favorites but they also are indicative of the different techniques that I used during the afternoon and evening. The bridal portraits above were all taken indoors in fairly low light. The top portrait was taken in a corner where there were two large windows. One camera left and one behind the subject. This gives some great light. Nice soft light for the face and great accent on the face and shoulder from behind.
This one is taken in the same area but the subject is now standing and we can see the bare bulb lamp and natural wood of the window frames behind her. I like this one because the event took place in an awesome country house and this gives that feel. And the rustic red walls go well with the blue in the flowers.
So next we have moved outside to the gazebo and I have broken out the Vivitar 285HV on a stand with my shoot-thru umbrella. I underexposed the ambient by 1 1/2 to 2 stops so that the subjects pop. And then bring up the flash power until I get a good exposure. The shoot-thru allows you to get the flash very close to the subject which maximizes the power of the small strobe but also increases the apparent size of the light source. This gives the nice soft transitions from highlight to shadow.
I have tried flash blur before without any success. But I decided to try it again while the bride was on the dance floor. I actually got a few shots that were good. This is my favorite because the side of the bride's face is in focus but you get a sense of the motion of the clapping. So I just really dragged the shutter here. I got 1/8 of a second on this one. So I would focus, start to rotate the camera, and press the shutter release while rotating the camera.
So here is the cake smash. For this I took advantage of the white ceiling of the front porch. It was tight quarters with many people on the porch. Not enough room to work my umbrella around so I fired my Vivitar into the ceiling. I took one setup shot made an adjustment and took the rest.
I carried the stand with umbrella around a lot during the evening when shooting the special portraits. But while I had light, I took many candids at ISO1600. The noise reduction in LR2 took care of that and gives a great result.
For processing I:
1) Did the noise reduction when needed.
2) Added some contrast by bringing up the black levels.
3) For the bride, I always \reduced the clarity slider a little for some added softness.
4) Added a little vibrance to bring out surrounding colors without affecting skin tones.
5) And added vignetting to taste.
That's about it. It was a great experience. They seemed happy. I shot about 450 shots and processed a little over 200 keepers. Wouldn't mind doing this again sometime I think.
Be blessed.
Labels:
balancing ambient,
lightroom,
natural light,
one light,
portraits,
shoot thru,
wedding portraits
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They looked great, congrats on a job well done! I've gotta shoot my first wedding Thursday (weather permitting, there are some terrible floods here in Georgia right now).