I’m not sure why I can get away with doing these things and it works so well sometimes.
It’s really so simple and cheasy and yet it works.
I just have them look at me and say “serious, now smile and now look at eachother and giggle like girls or whatever.”
I do it all really quickly to capture the first real emotions and the spontaneity.
I don’t give them time to think of the request and try to make it posed and stale… usually they’ll do it as a reaction to the request and then when they find themselves looking at eachother smiling and laughing it usually sets off a trigger to make them do it more and more when they realize what they’re doing… so I’m ready to capture the whole sequence.
Obviously sometimes it’s better than others.
People so often look at pictures and comment on faces… they love such and such person’s face in this picture. Well this is one way to make this happen more often
This was from a year ago. I was working on getting the lighting working and decided to try a couple without lighting.
Sometimes if you pose them they just don’t get the vision that you’re just getting profiles and silhouettes but I think next twilight I’ll have to try to get them to look cool.
This has kind of become one of my things I do at each wedding.
First of all I always stay until the Bride and Groom leaves… though there might not be much going on and though the families tell me I’m free to go, it doesn’t hurt to stick around just in case something happens so the families aren’t left saying and remembering how there was one shot they wish they would have gotten.
I usually drag the shutter when they leave with a low flash straight at them… I’ll pan along with them and sometimes even exagerate the pan of the camera to get some fun lines.
As you can tell it’s best when they’re waving good bye… and lots of fun when the car is decorated nicely. (The people that decorated the car will be so happy with your pictures documenting their hard work)
When I made the decision to cut back on the number of weddings I made a decision to put more work in the weddings I do.
One of the things I started doing was double checking my edits, then triple checking and each time finding quick fast improvements that would make the pictures way better.
CHECK OUT THIS NEW AWESOMENESS -
(More about it in Posts to come)
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SELECTING
After those looks I would go back through and select pictures I think would look great in black and white. Now days after working on thousands of these I can often spot the picture that will look best in B&W but sometimes I have to double check by converting it quickly and then converting it back.
In Lightroom the shortcut is “V” you can check to see if it has potential if it does make a virtual copy and then make the second copy the one that will be B&W the shortcut for virtual copies is ctrl+’
I often find myself selecting the pictures with the most emotion and usually my favorite pictures are given that second B&W look.
One extra benefit
An extra benefit from turning pictures B&W is that going through the pictures is yet one extra look at them. And when they’re in B&W you often pay so much closer attention to exposure levels because colors (specially bright colors) are not playing with your perceptions anymore. I’ll therefore turn B&W see what needs to be done and make corrections before I create the virtual copy… so i don’t have to do things twice. B&W is also great for paying closer attention to making things sharper.
HISTORY
In times past I would tell my clients I could turn their pictures B&W but hardly anyone made reqeusts of me… I took that as a compliment that I was practically perfect. haha But in the end I figure they just don’t know what it might look like, and they might choose pictures that don’t look good in B&W
A little more history is that when I first started photography I wasn’t a fan of B&W… it seemed like cheating to me. I’ve grown to love it and recognize for me it’s spot in my work.
CREATING GALLERIES
Another fun thing I’m doing is creating a gallery of all the images from the session that I converted to B&W.
Usually I leave a copy in color because it often never fails that you do Only B&W and they’ll ask for the color… so if I just have B&W I either think the colors weren’t anything special or I was lazy and might pay for it later, it was probably an afterthought picture anyway.
To create a gallery of just B&Ws in Smugmug you’ll have to start in Lightroom (or similar program) keyword every B&W … I use the keyword “bw”
How to select all B&W the fastest… go to gallery go to the filtering options > select metadata options > change one of the columns to “treatment” > you’ll see you can filter by B&W > select them all > keyword them “bw” > then export > then upload to smugmug
In SmugMug: Add a new gallery seperate from the gallery that contains ALL pictures from the event the B&W gallery will be seperate with nothing to upload > when you get to the uploading section instead select Make Smart Gallery > select the from gallery option and select the gallery with all the pictures then add another qualifier and use that one to select by the keyword > then make sure to select the option that requires ALL requirements otherwise it will select all pictures from that gallery and all B&Ws you have on smugmug.
Anyway check to see if it works and then you have a gallery of all your B&W from that shoot
I love when i find good locations to photograph from above.
Remember we go through life seeing things at the 5′2″-6′ angle… change that up and you automatically add a unique quality to your pictures.
Dresses often look really good from this angle as well. These two didn’t need it but certain body types will appreciate it as well.
70mm f/2.8 if you’re wondering… I bet if I had my 50mm f/1.4 it would have a more dramatic effect but I would have had to work really hard to make sure his head was the same distance away as hers.
A wedding recently at La Cailled in Sandy Utah. I took out the Jarvie Window for just a few minutes and got some pictures when they started dancing and pulled some people in for some close ups of course.
The purpose of this post is to inspire people to take pictures wherever they want. Old stereotypes be damned.
Baker is what many might consider one of the Ugliest towns in the United States, boring and hot. Good for gasoline and some fast food. So I was excited to shoot some engagement pictures there. The couple traveling with me seemed to think I was just being goofy and playing a joke, (understandable) so we only took a few.
(Above) This is just outside of Baker… the mountains are certainly nothing out of northern Utah… not the typical vision of beauty. But it makes it strong and unique. Yeah I wish I had shot for more than about 2-3 minutes. I also wish it wasn’t 100 degrees.
What’s the most distinctive thing about Baker? The tallest thermometer in the world.
So I convinced them to get out for a minute or two and shoot here in the middle of an ugly, empty, hot and dirty parking lot.
Looking back the iconic aspect of having the thermometer is cool but I’m such a fan of the colors and the sky. Made laying down on the burning hot ground worth it.
Underneath a billboard for some shade… hoping to get the trailer park a bit more in the scene. I should have stoop up high on something to get more of the scenery.
The colors of this place are distinct in the pictures… you can’t really tell it’s late morning and almost 100 degrees. I actually like the way the color of this place is mid day.
NOT BAKER (Below)
OK so we stopped several locations during our trip and this was mid morning outside of st. george off of some random street. The color and light was amazing when we passed by but we hit another location first and so we didn’t get back for about an hour. easily my favorite pictures of the event… even if I was excited about trying to make Baker look good.
Live music is not only fun for wedding guests, but can be a lot of fun to take pictures of.
This is just a sample of one I enjoyed from last night’s wedding. Love the expression.
Live music adds a feeling to the day that is awesome, DJs are also fun and ones that aren’t cheesy and know how to get a crowd to get out and dancing without being needy about it are also a lot of fun. Sometimes you want the songs you want and bands can’t do them and sometimes you want a good sound system, but then again a live band brings in a great feeling to it all.
We were staying at the beach house of next week’s bride (last week) I thought it’d be fun to do some pictures for her (spontaneous) prior to leaving back for Utah. So we talked down to the beach and took some pictures in a short 40-60 minute block of time she had open.
I love that she’s picking something different for her wedding dress and it matches her personality and looks.
So I think a lot of people would love to have their pictures taken on a Hawaiian beach. This bride wanted it and that’s what she got.
Even as a very subtle sunset it was still good enough for some pretty cool pictures and perhaps because it was more subtle we were able to focus on some other locations and poses.
I had a ton of fun photographing for this couple, both of their families were awesome and their love of photography made it a wonderful experience for me.
That makes 2 terrifically awesome weddings in a row in Hawaii! Let’s not slow down or break the streak yet!
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