"Dancing In The Sunlight"

"Dancing In The Sunlight"
©David A. Ziser

So what do you do when you are working in the worst of conditions on your wedding shoot. I'm defining "worst conditions" as bright afternoon sun, no clouds, and shooting by the side of the road as pretty nasty shooting conditions. How do you still pull off a fairly dramatic shot of the bride? I used my tungsten gelled Quantum off-camera flash on full power, pushed it into the shot because of the small aperture I was using.  That gave me the correct exposure on the bride's face.  With the camera on 2800K. the bride was properly color balanced but the rest of the scene went BLUE since it was unaffected by the flash exposure.  The fast shutter speed gave me a built in Vignette at the bottom of the frame too. I wish the light was slightly lower so it would have opened up the eye sockets a bit more.  I was staring into the sun and missed it – yep, it happens sometimes.  Some quick work in Photoshop removed the "urban problems".  Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 10-22mm lens at 12mm, F22 @ 1/320 second, ISO 200.  Enjoy!  -David

p.s.  Hit the "Read More..." link below for the before shot. 

Here’s what the setting looked like before Photoshop. Sure wish I could have used CS5’s “content aware fill” feature.  Hey, just having fun.  -David