Good Morning Everybody,
Wow! We had one great wedding this past weekend. As I mentioned last week, I photographed the young lady's Bat Mitzvah several years ago so it was good to be with the entire family again. We got a fairly early start on the day with Larry Loar, my assistant and good friend, meeting at the studio about one o'clock. We quickly reviewed the order of the day, the wedding cast, and the different locations in which we would be working. We then packed up the gear and headed to the wedding.
We were on site by around two o'clock and and after a very busy and super exciting day, were finally making our way back home at around 12:30 AM. I can always tell how energetic a wedding is by when we get our first "Coke break". I think we grabbed our first one about 10:15 Saturday evening. That meant that we were going like crazy for most of the day but, I have to tell you, it was a blast and get some great images.
I thought for today's post I'd share with you a couple images showing you the type of variety I try to capture for my clients on the wedding day.
Wedding Day Re-Cap
Image #1:
In our first image you see a simple, easy black-and-white portrait I took of the bride while she was still in the dressing room at the hotel. I featured this image in the “Image of the Day” post above. I love it just get a few of these photographs that capture the soft, beautiful qualities of the bride on her wedding day.
Image #2:
We had scheduled a few moments for the bride and groom to see each other for their first wedding day encounter. After photographing those special moments, I had allowed about 15 more minutes to quickly get some photographs of the couple around the beautiful Netherland Hilton hotel. This hotel is on the short list of historical places the United States and always offers some great opportunities for some fantastic wedding images. The image below is a simple bridal portrait against the magnificent beauty of the hotel that, I think, will look great in the final bridal album.
Image #3:
This next image is just a cute photograph of the bride with her sister and her good friend. In getting these photographs, it's always important for me to bring in an auxiliary light – my off-camera flash – in this case, coming in from camera right. The additional light source just adds a much greater sense of dimension and depth to the photograph. By using a long lens and a wide aperture, I'm able to throw the background out of focus isolating viewer’s attention just on my three beautiful subjects. The finished result is a nice portrait of the bride with her friends.
Image #4:
I love this next image too. After we had completed our entire series of group photographs, the florist finished up the flowers on the Chuppah (the weeding canopy) and also created a rose petal path up the center aisle. This combination gave me a great opportunity to get this beautiful image of the bride and groom within the setting of the wedding ceremony just moments before the service began. By under exposing the surrounds slightly and with the combination of the backlighting, we get a really cool photograph of her wedding couple.
Image #5:
One of my favorite photographs to take of the couple is an image among the magnificent surrounds of the reception venue. For Saturday's wedding, the venue was a Cincinnati Art Museum – one of the most popular wedding venues in the city. My good friend, Kevin Ford, one of the top florists in the city did a spectacular job with flower and room decor. 10 minutes before the guests were brought into the room my friend, Jennifer Hillman, our bridal consultant for the event, invited the bride and groom to join me and my assistant for this exciting photograph. We take a series of photographs with the bride and groom in the room but the backlit photograph is always one of my favorites.
Backlighting, as I've mentioned so many times here DigitalProTalk, is easy to accomplish. My assistant has the Quantum flash at about quarter, half, full power behind the couple depending on the amount of ambient light in the scene. In this case Larry would've had the light on quarter power. I selected a shutter speed to pick up the right amount of ambient light, asked the bride and groom to just look at each, other bringing their foreheads quite close together (a nice posing trick for couples photographs), and then made my exposure. This is one of the signature images I try to bring to all of my coverages and again, I think look great in their wedding album.
Image #6:
Now let me give you a preview of tomorrow's Technique Tuesday. I wanted to try completely different lighting set up for Saturday's wedding. With the benefit of our new high ISO cameras and my light weight portable lighting units, I knew I could get great reception lighting for the entire evening very quickly and efficiently.
With your Museum's permission we arranged to remotely fired strobes on either side of the room up on the second floor balcony of the Art Museum. The cross-lighting bathed the dance floor with a wonderful dimensional light that you just would not get any other way. I love the result.
Please be sure to tune in tomorrow and I'll talk about the entire concept and technique with you.
Image #7:
And finally, another one of my signature images taken as a bride and groom enjoy their bridal dance. In this image I switched off the room-lights and used only Larry's strobe behind the couple a quarter power. This image is always been one of my most popular for as long as I've been photographing weddings. Don’t you love how the light bounced off the groom’s shirt and illuminated the bride’s face – very cool.
I did many variations on the backlighting theme during the wedding dance and the father daughter dance which I hope to bring to you in another upcoming Technique Tuesday down the road. Please stay tuned. Anyway, in the meantime, enjoy this image today.
I know I featured a lot of my signature images in today's post, but please keep in mind that I also took over 2,000 other images capturing the fun, spontaneity, and excitement of the day. You'll see several examples in tomorrow’s post.
Tomorrow’s Technique Tuesday – A Preview Of Coming Attractions
As I mentioned earlier in this post, I was trying a new lighting set up for the reception shoot. For tomorrow's Technique Tuesday, I've already selected the images and have a great lighting tutorial lined up for you that I know that you enjoy. When a plan to tune in and see what I've got in store.
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Hey gang, that's it for me today. We got 48 hours to get several projects wrapped before we had to Michigan bright and early Wednesday morning. LaDawn and I are both "pedal to the metal" until we leave bright and early on Wednesday. Everybody have a great rest of the day and I'll plan to see you tomorrow morning for brand-new technique Tuesday: wedding reception lighting!
See you then,
– David
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