Work as a wedding photographer isn't just about taking photographs of key moments, or about the photo gear. Often enough it is up to you as the wedding photographer to help guide the day's time-line and flow, and also just to help. For me, wedding photography isn't just a passively observed event where I take photographs. And if you shoot with a photo-journalistic style in mind, it doesn't mean you have to remain uninvolved. I'm there to record the day's events, but also to help, if necessary, making it a spectacular day.
In the photo Read more inside...
Wedding photography - Dealing with the DJ's lights
As wedding reception venues and DJs are becoming more sophisticated in their lighting, there's now the added challenge of spotlights and lasers and other lighting effects that compete with the simplicity of just using flash.
So how do you deal with this? You just deal with this. One way or another.
You can either embrace the colors (as in the example above),
or you can use flash to neutralize some of the wild color casts.
Just how do you do that? Well, there's a little bit of homework at the end of this.
Very often, I Read more inside...
Photographing the wedding processional with extreme bounce flash
As mentioned in the article on photographing the wedding processional, in my opinion, the wedding processional in the church is likely the most challenging part of the day in terms of our technique. People are moving towards you - admittedly at slow pace, unless the bridesmaids are nervous. Then they can easily just zip right up to the front! The light levels are low, and the light is most likely uneven. Adding flash to this is a reliable way to get clean open light on your subjects, but bounce flash can be a bit of a Read more inside...
With the response to the article on bounce flash photography at wedding receptions, it might be good to continue the topic. While I prefer TTL flash when I use bounce flash, there are times when I do use my on-camera flash in manual exposure mode when I bounce it.
Julie & Kenny's wedding, at the Laurita Winery, NJ, proved to be a bit of a challenge with the reception. The reception area was in the winery which had a beautiful interior ... but it wasn't white. Bounce flash was a touch more difficult than usual here. Read more inside...
This photograph from a recent wedding got a few comments and questions in the album on Facebook. The questions really hinged around "where did all that light come from?" or whether I had used off-camera flash.
The purple and blue light in the back-ground is from the up-lighting from the entertainment / DJ company. The light on the couple entering the reception room ... is all one on-camera bounce flash. Read more inside...
Wedding photography: Using high ISO and flash at the reception
Chatting with other photographers at the recent WPS convention in Chapel Hill, NC, I was again struck by how there are so many different ways of approaching lighting. In this case, lighting at the wedding reception. The one photographer I was chatting to, set up multiple speedlights around the reception room, and then controls which are fired, from his on-camera Master speedlight. Very impressive.
In recent years, the wedding reception venues where I've shot on the East Coast of the USA, have moved away from being the Read more inside...
A simple lighting setup for photographing the wedding formals
Photographing a wedding can be pretty hectic at times, especially as it so often becomes the photographer's de facto responsibility to keep everything on track. The formal photo session specifically is a part of the day that many photographers find challenging. The other challenging part of the wedding day is photographing the wedding processional. You have a narrow margin to get things just right. No second chance.
When photographing the family portraits, you can really help yourself by nailing your lighting. Get it Read more inside...
Sydney & Paul - their wedding day - photo & video fusion clip
This idea of blending photographs and video snippets from a wedding, into a fusion clip, still fascinates me. In a 5 to 6 minute clip you're able to give a nicely condensed view of the wedding day. Combining the photos and video in a sensible way that visually makes sense, takes time however. And Jessica and I are still on the learning curve. (Is it even possible to really get to to the top of things these days with the rapidly accelerated pace of digital photography?) Anyway, I love the results so far!
So here Read more inside...
Weddings are one of those occasions when families and friends come together from far and wide. An opportunity to see people they might rarely see otherwise. So it is an important task of any wedding photographer to record this - to get photographs of the various family groups.
This photo is the pull-back shot from one of the big groups I had to photograph at an Indian wedding this weekend. Now, everyone who has been to an Indian wedding, knows that they are sprawling events. There's lots going on and it can be slightly chaotic at times. Read more inside...
Wedding photography - a photo-journalistic style ... or more posed?
A photographer who attended the recent flash photography workshop here in New York, asked me an interesting question regarding my wedding photography style. His observation was about how I seemed to consistently get such well-timed un-posed and natural looking images with my wedding photography. Since my explanation seemed to surprise him, and even bordered on being a real aha! moment for him, I thought it could serve as an article here which might interest other wedding photographers.
When asked by photographers Read more inside...
