POTM [05/08] Hitched

[Lovah]

My brother got married on the 10th may and I did the photography. The link to the theme was pretty obvious, here is one of my favorites. Nothing was changed in photoshop, straight out of camera, just resized it. Almost missed the deadline again!



Exif:
400D - 50mm F1.4 - no flash
Aperture Priority: F2.0 - 1/640s - iso100

[Smilodon]

Good photo. I wish that man in the background wasn't there, though.

Why is this posted under "POTM old", BTW?

[Agamer]

Yeah agree good photo a shame about the guy in background. Also looks like you might want to trying brightening it up as it look a tad underexposed right not but should be able to sort it in post.

[Lovah]

Oops wrong logo, didn't notice the 'old'.
The guy in the background is my brother... her husband.. it was kind of the whole point of the picture..

It looks fine on Mac, but my pics usually turn out a bit darker on PC. I'll try and brighten it up later, but this will have to do for the POTM contest.

L

[Dublin_Gunner]

Its a nice photo.

IMO if your brother wasnt as out of focus, to maybe show him looking at her, that would have tied the 2 people together a bit more for the pic, as to have to explain why he's there misses the point of the photo.

He just looks a bit random.

Nice shot though

[supermonkey]

I like the idea behind the photo. Having the groom in the background, a little out of focus is a good, 'standard'-type of wedding shot. I was able to make out that the guy in the background was wearing a suit of some kind, so I knew what you were going after. However, I do agree with Dublin_Gunner that he's too out of focus. To pull of a shot like that, the background subject needs to be in that middle ground between 'too-out-of-focus-to-see-clearly', and 'too-in-focus-and-steals-attention-from-the-bride.'

I agree with the others that the lighting is off. The image may be a tad underexposed, but I think the real problem is that the lighting is much too flat. There aren't any soft shadows or highlights to help her stand out from her surroundings. Keep in mind that lighting isn't exactly my forte, but I think a good fill from camera-left would have helped brighten her face and add some highlights in her hair.

Finally, and it's a minor niggle, but I would have had her remove her glasses. She may need them to see, but she doesn't have to be looking at anything while you're taking her portrait. Removing her glasses - along with some fill light - would have allowed you to capture more detail in her eyes, which is one of the most important features in any portrait.

I hope that doesn't come off too harsh. I think this is a great attempt, and some thorough post-processing my be able to give more depth to the lighting. Just some food for thought if you find yourself shooting any more weddings.

-monkey

[Firehed]

I agree completely with supermonkey. A strobe high camera left through a small shoot-through umbrella would have improved the lighting quite a bit, preferably in very close (read: just barely out of frame) so that you can use it at low power without having it spill onto the tree too badly. From what you have, bumping the exposure by about a stop and then hitting recovery hard (to stop the background from totally blowing out) would also improve things. Perhaps bump up blacks or shadows a tiny bit as well, and try to bring out the great texture on the dress just a tiny bit further.

There's something about the bokeh that bothers me just a little bit. I can't say quite what (the highlights seem a bit sharp or something), but masking out the bride and applying a very light Gaussian blur may help.

[Lovah]

Hey

Thanks for all the reply's. I still need to start on the post processing of the pictures for print. I just didn't have time for it for the POTM. It does look a bit underexposed on my the windows machine at work (on my MacbookPro it looks more bright). Thanks for all the remarks/tips. Just to be fair though, I had about 10 minutes in the park and the couple wanted to do 5 shots, so I had roughly two minutes for each shot. Not much time for setting up flashes, removing glasses, getting the flash right..

But all very good tips, wich I must try out when I have some time in a shoot. I was afraid of too much bookeh and dialed it down to F2.0, but maybe F2.8 would have been more then enough.

Thanks again for the reactions!

[Jumeira_Johnny]

Originally Posted by Lovah

It does look a bit underexposed on my the windows machine at work (on my MacbookPro it looks more bright).

Make sure you have the auto brightening turned off on the MBP. On my mac (color corrected and non auto brightened) it looks underexposed and has a major green tint.

Originally Posted by Lovah

I was afraid of too much bookeh and dialed it down to F2.0, but maybe F2.8 would have been more then enough.

I think even 2.8 would have been to much. f/4 would have been fine, leaving enough detail to make out who the guy was; which as you point out, was the point.

Edit: I had a 5 min go at it in ACR on the left and Aperture on the right:



Neither looks great, but then again I don't have the raw file, just the 72dpi jpeg.