"The Softness Of Your Kiss"

"The Softness Of Your Kiss"
©David A. Ziser

This was an image I made during last week's wedding. What's fascinating about this image is how I created it. I used the HD video features of my Canon 7D.  I set up the location, natural soft lighting, and framing on the couple and asked them to simply interact with each other as I filmed continuously for about 30 seconds.

As I kept the camera focused on them I give them simple directions -to look at each other, snuggle in with each other, give each other a soft kiss, etc. At 30 frames a second that meant I had nearly 900 images to select from.  That made it easy to get the best expressions and the best image.

This frame grab was one of my favorites. We printed out several of the frame grabs from the shoot. Even at the 8x10 size they look fabulous. This topic is going to be the subject of one of my Technique Tuesday's coming up very soon – I promise.

But getting back to this photograph - what I like about it is the soft light on the both of them are and how gently they're interacting with each other.

I tweaked the image just a bit in Lightroom 4 raising the shadow density just a bit and increasing the exposure slightly as well. I preferred the medium to high key effect in my black-and-white images. To finish the image with the soft, ethereal feel I wanted I reduced the clarity to -70. That adjustment gave me the halation around the brighter parts of the image adding to the “dreamy” effect. I think it's an image the bride and groom will really enjoy having in their wedding album.

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 100mm, F8.0, ISO 400, 1920x1080 HD video. Enjoy! – David