Hoddo .. nope. I shot in manual exposure mode in my camera. So there is no “dialling in some – EV”.

I decided on an exposure I wanted for the sky. As such, there is no specific correct exposure. Just an exposure that *I* prefer and want. And that was more or less where the sky darkened.

Then I added flash to the mix, exposing correctly for my subject.
The FEC wasn’t necessarily +EV, since the flash is the main source of light .. but most likely around 0EV.

Neil vN

Just wanted to get this straight in my mind…

get the exposure for the background of X then dial in some -ev to darken that brooding sky. Now the flash add some +FEC as you’re using ttl? Does this about sum it up or am I having a brain *art?

Hi there Bill … I do use some Photoshop plug-ins when I sweeten an individual image. That photograph at the top had an adjustment layer added to it where I used one of the film types that Alien Skin Exposure 2 has.

But for wedding photography, I really try to stay away from having to use Photoshop at all for the proofing stage, since this would slow down my post-production too much.

Therefore I rely on great skin tones from my raw converter already.

Essential here (I believe) is using the Adobe’s Camera Portrait profile in ACR. It would be the same for Lightroom if you’re a Lightroom user.

I’ll add a post later this week explaining how I set up my default in Adobe Camera Raw.

As for the learning institutions you mentioned .. sorry, I have no experience of them, so I can’t give a recommendation either way.

Neil vN

Thanks for your great work and advice!

BILL

Thanks

Blake .. of course. ISO affects ambient exposure.
Remember, those three controls always affect ambient exposure, regardless of what you might be doing with flash (or not) – shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

Neil vN

As always, great post, love to read your blog especially the “how-tos.” You mentioned that you wanted to darken the sky so you stopped down. I can understand that changing the aperture from 5.6 to 6.3 would cause the scene to be darker, but at the same time the ISO changed from 400 to 200. Does this also effectively darken the scene (by an additional stop)?

Thanks!
Blake

Tam .. these images had some post-processing done to them, but the good skin tones were already there before, right out of the camera. Good exposure, and a sensible WB is a great start. For these images, I used Daylight WB, but that is something I nearly always adjust further as part of my raw workflow.

Neil vN

Yet another excellent post.
One thing that I love in these photos are the lovely skin tones. Did you use any type of gel and/or WB setting to get those tones.

Thanks,
Tam

I’m up for touching on the subject of post processing.

Tom K.