"An Easy Afternoon In The Park"

"An Easy Afternoon In The Park"
© David A. Ziser

After this week’s Technique Tuesday, I thought I’d revisit this image which was taken as part of a lesson on how to find and see the light. Too many people just shoot away without any regard to trying to sculpt the scene with a BEAUTIFUL direction of light. This was the perfect location to do just that.

The light was flooding in from the open sky to my left and the arbor the couple was sitting under blocked the overhead light. This created a beautiful direction of light in which to place my couple. I asked them to turn their heads slightly into the direction of light in order to open up the shadows on the "camera side" of their faces. Look how much more flattering the lighting is on the couple - it slims them and trims them sculpturing their facial features beautifully.

I was also attentive as to how I brought them together to create a relaxed, casual and believable triangular composition. The last tweak was positioning their faces in the top left quadrant of the viewfinder which completed my composition. Sure, we take about 4000 images on the wedding day striving to capture all the fun, spontaneity, excitement and emotion of the day, but I still sneak a few of these types  of (posed) images into the wedding celebration coverage too. Our clients can easily see and truly appreciate the difference.

Camera specs; Canon 40D fitted with 24-105 IS lens at 35mm, F 5.0 @ 1/60 second, ISO 250. Enjoy! -David