![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/florida\/LK-2555-final.jpg\")
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My style in wedding photography veers towards the more straight-forward image – uncluttered and without much Photoshop work done. I really believe that the more you fudge with a photograph, the more likely it would not be as timeless as you might want it to be. Retouching styles become dated. So I tend towards the more straight-forward rendition of a photograph. That said, you can most definitely enhance the original photograph to make it really pop.<\/p>\n
Here is an example – a\u00a0favorite image from a sequence taken during the romantic portrait session after a wedding.\u00a0\u00a0The wedding took place in Florida. As\u00a0a wedding photographer in New Jersey<\/a>, it is quite a treat to do a destination wedding<\/a> – someplace a little more exotic than the Garden State.\u00a0Not only was it a destination wedding in Florida, but this also happened to be the first time that I photographed a same-sex wedding.\u00a0\u00a0 And I felt particularly honored to have so much faith placed in me with a special event like this.<\/p>\n The reason why this image is my favorite is that it shows a wonderful couple together in a spontaneous moment.\u00a0 It is\u00a0 very much *them*, and I am sure their friends and family will instantly recognize this image as capturing the essence of\u00a0who they are, and how\u00a0they are.<\/p>\n This is where a lens like the 70-200mm f2.8 is essential .. it allows breathing space between you and your subjects.\u00a0\u00a0 The light is all available light.\u00a0 No flash necessary with the soft\u00a0early evening light.<\/p>\n But I did a little bit of work on the image in Photoshop, so let’s see how I got there ..<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here is the image directly out of camera.\u00a0\u00a0 To\u00a0get this, I extracted the embedded JPG from the RAW file using BreezeBrowser.<\/p>\n The first thing you’ll notice is the strong blue color cast because of the late evening.\u00a0 Even with my WB set to Cloudy, it is still too cold.\u00a0 But instead of wasting time messing around with the white balance settings, I accepted this .. and knowing I have the leeway with a RAW file, I just got stuck into the actual job of photographing the couple.\u00a0 I could always fine-tune the WB later to my liking.\u00a0\u00a0 And my liking is a much\u00a0warmer color balance, as adjusted in ACR \/ Bridge\u00a0…<\/p>\n With this I would like to labor a small point again.\u00a0 I am often asked what White Balance setting I am using, or used in an image … but really,\u00a0it isn’t of much consequence.\u00a0\u00a0 Rather concentrate on the moment<\/strong> .. the lighting .. reacting to what you’re seeing .. than getting stuck into specific Kelvin settings during the photography session.<\/p>\n Which does briefly bring\u00a0us to the\u00a0technical details: Back to the image .. now you’ll notice that compared to the original, I cloned out all the seaweed.\u00a0 That’s just visual clutter distracting from the couple.\u00a0 I also removed a hint of red in the clouds to the top left in the image.\u00a0 It kept pulling my eye away .. when I really wanted attention on the bride’s expression.<\/p>\n Then with those details taken care of, I wanted a bit more snap to the image.\u00a0 The previous post on this blog touched on this topic .. making the image pop a bit more<\/a>, and for this image, I used a different technique.<\/p>\n I created a duplicate layer on which I ran a softening plug-in\u00a0-Portraiture by Imagenomic.\u00a0 I used it at the default settings. \u00a0Simple.\u00a0 There are hordes of\u00a0other actions and plug-ins available to soften an image.<\/p>\n But\u00a0what I really was after was some snap\u00a0to the image.\u00a0\u00a0 For this I used an amazing piece of software\u00a0\u00a0– Topaz Adjust<\/a><\/strong> (Topaz Labs). \u00a0 (And as software goes, it is quite affordable.)\u00a0 I ran Topaz Adjust on another layer, and then set it to Soft Light blending mode.\u00a0 Very similar to that previous article on making an image more vibrant.<\/p>\n And there you have it ..\u00a0the final\u00a0image that I am very proud of.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wedding photography – Retouching & style My style in wedding photography veers towards the more straight-forward image – uncluttered and without much Photoshop work done. I really believe that the more you fudge with a photograph, the more likely it would not be as timeless as you might want it to be. Retouching styles become Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,32,1,45],"tags":[51,72],"yst_prominent_words":[3691,2870,4163,5312,2238,2561,1020,1995,1520,1979,1841,5152,2935,11064,8769,11062,1226,1224,2090,11063],"class_list":{"0":"post-1835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-digital-imaging","8":"category-photoshop","9":"category-uncategorized","10":"category-wedding-photography","11":"tag-destination-wedding","12":"tag-photoshop-technique","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1835"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45498,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835\/revisions\/45498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1835"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/florida\/LK-2555-orig.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/florida\/LK-2555-acr.jpg\")
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\nNikon D3;\u00a0 Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S<\/a> (B&H)
\n1\/500th @ f4 @ 500 ISO … but exposure was pulled up 0.5 EV in\u00a0 post-processing the RAW file.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n