"Come Dance With Me"

"Come Dance With Me"
©David A. Ziser

I captured this image a few years ago during a wedding that took place in downtown Cincinnati, OH.  The bride was from a small town up the Ohio River from Cincinnati but always wanted a big wedding.  She decided to have her wedding in the big city and I got the call for the photography.

One thing she wanted to capture in her photographs were the most notable landmarks of our Queen City. The most prominent of those landmarks downtown is Fountain Square directly and more importantly to her was to include the fountain in the image. The city continues to move the Tyler Davidson Fountain to different points on the square.  This new location is not one of my favorites, but we still made it work for this image.

The challenge was to make the bride and groom “pop” out of the scene against this setting.  That meant that backlighting was going to be the order of the day.  I had my assistant position himself about 12 feet behind the couple with the flash at full power. I underexposed the scene about 1 1/2 stops.

The weather was not the best – we had a brief rain shower before we headed to the square as you can see from the puddles on the terrace tile squares.  That meant the sky was kind of grey too.  A little help from Lightroom saved the day and the image.

The groom dipped the bride and kissed her, a gust of wind “poofed” out the veil and I made the exposure.  Yes, it was indeed one her favorites images from their wedding celebration.

Camera specs: Canon 40D fitted with Sigma 12-24mm at 12mm, F8.0 @ 1/250 second, ISO 100.  Enjoy!  -David