HOW i SHOT THiS

  • 100mm f2
  • Leading lines
  • Sunrise
  • sunny
  • soft
  • Single Shot
  • Single Focus Point
  • Quiet
  • off center
  • Natural Light
  • Laughing
  • Adobe Lightroom CC
  • kissing
  • Italy
  • cuddling
  • clear
  • city
  • Center Framed
  • Canon 5D mk II
  • calm
  • Autofocus
  • symmetry

The story behind the image

Gaia and Valentina are a couple who have lived in Venice for as long as they have been together; for them, the city is the symbol of their story and their love. The idea for their shoot was to take photographs on the day after their wedding, without anyone else, in the most iconic places in the city. Fun fact: it was July 2020, in the middle of Covid, and the city bare of tourists was a rare sight.
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Directions

Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)

I asked them if they were afraid of heights and if they felt up to sitting on the edge of the deck. They didn’t make me ask twice. I first had them turn around with their backs to the lens, with their legs facing the centre of the bridge, that way they got familiar with it, then very slowly I asked them to turn around and stand dangling with their feet on the gap. The girls were having fun and cuddling even without me saying anything.

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What did you say?

Girls, leave your legs loose and let the move naturally and keep cuddling as you are! Perfect, look into each other’s eyes and tell each other how much you love one another, and even go in for a kiss.

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Tone of Directions

Quiet, Calm

Composition

In this case it was pretty obvious for me to shoot putting the subject in the middle of the frame. That’s because I wanted both the sky and the canal to be in the shot. Also: with a wider angle it was possible to see the billboard behind them, over the wall of the big pink building, so I tried my best to cut it out the frame without removing so much of the landscape I was trying to catch. This composition also has a lot of leading lines which all point directly to the couple, naturally bringing attention to them.

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Compositional Rules

Leading LinesSymmetry

framing

Center FramedWideFull BodyNatural Frames

Focusing

Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)

I always prefer to shoot with a single center focus point even if nobody does that way any more. I know that cameras are great with autofocus but I simply love to choose exactly where to put the focus, and I have when the camera chooses for me!

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Focus Mode

Single Shot

Focus POints

Single Focus Point

Focused on

Their heads

Equipment &
Exif

Camera
Canon 5D mk II
Lens
Canon 100mm f/2
Flash
None
Filter
None
1/800 @ f/2 ISO100 WB-Auto

The way the EXIF is written out follows the common photographic method (with the inclusion of White Balance at the end). Here it is broken down:

Shutter Speed @ Aperture ISO White Balance.

Light & Weather

The soft light of dawn was what I was looking for in this shot. ideally, I would have liked to arrive at this spot a little earlier so as not to overexpose the sky, but I compensated by shooting slightly underexposed. I wanted a dim light so as to relax the soft colors of the buildings and the colorful shades in the girls’ dresses. Fortunately this spot was amongst the buildings which provided shade for me to shoot in.

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Light Type

Natural Light

Light Quality

Soft

Time of day

Sunrise

Weather

ClearSunny

Editing Workflow

How did you edit this image?

The first thing I wanted to do in post-production was to lower the highlights, trying to recover the sky tones, and raise the shadows. I then tried to tone the shadows in a pinky shade, with orange touches, in order to create harmony with the colours of the walls of the buildings in the background. I raised the contrast of the image and added some clarity to bring out the texture of the water ripples and the marble of the bridge

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Editing Software
Adobe Lightroom CC
Preset Used
Personal Preset

Challenges

The most difficult thing was to find the confidence to ask the girls to do something potentially dangerous

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Solutions

I tried to ensure that it was not a dangerous situation, that there was the right space to lean on, and above all that no one was passing behind them who could accidentally push them

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Location

Location Name

Ponte dei Sospiri, Venezia

Location aDDRESS

Piazza San Marco, Venezia VE

Loation Type

City

Country

Italy

of course, i would never have asked if i had seen that the girls were not convinced and relaxed. i only asked them to come up because they were more than happy to do so and because it was a situation where i could keep everything under control. Certainly, shooting at such an early hour in the morning helped us! in this case we were also ‘helped’ by the covid-restrictions situation which did not allow any tourists to go into the city.
if you want to come to Venezia and shoot in this wonderful city i highly recommend getting up well before dawn and hiring a small taxi boat in order to speed up the time and be able to finish before the crowds arrive

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