Daily Blogging
I have always wanted to shoot one of my clients’ weddings in fully black and white but never got a chance to do so because many clients would want color photographs on their big day. But in my most recent wedding I decided to just edit ~50 photos in BW to showcase their beautiful story. Here are the images that were captured.
It's been a while since I've posted anything on here but I will make it a habit. Starting today and every Wednesday thereafter I'll be posting a new blog post of a wedding that I shot.
Shot on Canon 1DX primarily with 35mm 1.4L
Sneak peak of Corina and Jesus wedding. I love it when colors change, the plus side of photographing outside of California, you get fall colors!
Photographing the people at weddings can be very difficult but! Photographing accessories can be much easier. I say easier because these objects don't talk back. Here are a few detailed shots from a few of the past weddings I shot.
Having textures, whether it is in the background or on the item can really help make the photo more interesting.
Get nice and tight! Don't be afraid to bust out the macro lens! If you don't have a macro lens one tip I learned when I started photographing weddings is stacking close up filters! There are filters on Amazon that you can throw onto your lens with just some easy screwing on and by stacking them you can get closer and closer to your subject without having a limit on your distance.
Turn off that flash! Put the bride by an open window and just shoot natural light. Natural light can bring a lot of emotion to the photo and really help the photograph grab the viewers attention.
One word. Layers! Use walls and doors do your advantage. The photo I took above looked boring when I shot it directly in front of it. I took a step back found an angle and took this photograph instead. It was taken in their kitchen! It really makes the audience feel like they are actually there at the wedding looking at the dress. Taking that sneak peak from around the corner.
I hope you guys enjoy some of my tips when photographing the details and accessories. I'll definitely come up with more and post it in the future!
Maybe I should call my Wednesday posts wedding Wednesdays? Post some wedding photography images as well as some wedding tips and tricks? But anyways onto the post.
Being a photographer on your own wedding kind of has its perks. The morning of my wife and myself's wedding day I brought my Leica Minilux out to shoot some photographs of our big day. I've shot numerous weddings but never weddings on film, though I would love to photograph a whole wedding in film (email me if you are interested, I'd even do it for free!) it just doesn't seem feasible now especially with all the uncle Bob's and phone photographers out there at weddings. Imagine going through a sea of obnoxious guests with smart phones and tablets in hand while you shoot with your film camera, but that is neither here nor there.
Anyways, I got a chance to finally develop some BW film at the local camera shop (shout out to Samy's Camera on Fairfax for always giving the TLC film needs) and got home and immediately scanned them in. I was nervous, scared, excited to see what turned out. I believe there were some really good photos that I enjoyed.
What I learned from the anxiousness of getting my film back to finally scanning it is that the wait is worth it with film. Often times we as photographers are so into chimping (looking at the back of our screen after a shot to admire our beautiful work) and the fast turn around time in the digital world we hardly get to really soak it in and enjoy the process and really look back and reflect on your shoot. With film it brings you back to that particular time and the physical copy you get after it is printed is a great feeling. It may be just me but film gives off more emotion. I don't know what it is but in my opinion it definitely conjures up more "feels" as these millennials say. Anyways, here are some photos from the morning of our wedding day.
All shot on Leica Minilux with Kodak tri-x 400.
Many times at weddings the Groom and Groomsman are the ones who don't really care much for group photos, but there is always that one special time when the groom and groomsman are Dragonball Z aficionados and want to take a very epic photograph.
The photo says it all so I'll talk a little about the setup.
I shot this with my Canon 5D mark III in burst mode (6FPS at RAW) with my trust 35mm 1.4L with natural light. It took about 4-5 times doing this to finally achieve the shot I was looking for and boy did they nail it.
I am super grateful to be shooting weddings in a day and age where post production can help turn an image that I personally goofed on the settings from unusable to being able to be printed and hung on the couple's wall.
The images below were shot on a Canon 1DX with Canon's 35mm 1.4 prime lens at 1/100, f3.2 and ISO 2000. As you can tell the sun was already beyond setting and passing the horizon. I had to work fast to take this shot because the wedding planner at the venue was rushing them to start their grand march and was nagging me to hurry. So I fired off a shot or 2 and rushed inside to get ready. I got home and looked at this image and thought that it was a wasted attempt. But with a little bit of Adobe Lightroom magic, voila! An image to be proud of.
With a little bit of tender love and care (warmth, brightness and saturation) I got an image that I messed up on turn into something the couple can adore for the rest of their lives. What I learned from this is that you should never delete and always keep the images in your camera. With CF and SD cards being easily accessible and fairly priced why not just keep a small 20MB file and see if it's worth the trouble fixing. Another image saved by Adobe, and I am sure it won't be the last.