- afternoon
- Natural Light
- Unposed
- String Lights
- Speech
- Soft Light
- shoot through
- Overcast Sky
- Outdoor
- natural frames
- Candid
- moments
- Evening
- dusk
- dinner table
- Dinner
- crowd
- Cloudy
- Center Framed
- Wide
The story behind the image
However, for this particular speech from the Bride’s sister, we wanted to create something a little more compelling. It’s a simple thing, but can be pretty impactful. That was to create an image from the guest’s perspective. We lowered ourselves, and found an opening between two guests, and framed the sister between them. This shot feels quite a bit more dynamic from this angle as it’s not the “easy” route of just standing up and taking the shot as is.
Composition
The composition here played the biggest role. We purposely lowered ourselves down just enough to get about head height of the guests and found an opening between two seated guests. We framed the sister between them as the two guests created a natural frame and also added context to the shot. We also chose to shoot this with our wider lens as we wanted to keep as many guests in the frame as we could without losing the focus of the sister.
framing
Center Framed
Focusing
Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)
We simply moved our single focus point over the sister as we didn’t want the camera to get confused and focus on the guests in the foreground by accident (if we opted to use multiple focus points). This way, we had 100% control over what was being focus.
Focus Mode
Single Shot Autofocus
Focus POints
Single Point
Focused on
The Sisters face
Equipment &
Exif
Camera
Lens
Flash
Filter
1/400 @ f/1.6 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
At this point of the evening, the sun had was just about to reach its sunset point. But since the sky was so thick with an overcast layer of clouds, everything became incredibly soft and forgiving. For that reason, we could shoot in any direction without worrying how the light would have affected our image.
Light Type
Natural Light
Time of day
Afternoon
Weather
Cloudy
Editing Workflow
How did you edit this image?
To edit this shot didn’t take too much effort as we had a really beautiful, soft light to work with. We applied our Protea preset to which we had to reduce a little bit of the color grading as things got a bit too warm for our liking. We then adjusted the exposure and white balance to get the overall warm skin tones that we were after. We finally added a simple vignette to darken the edges and draw the attention towards the sister.
Editing Software
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Preset Used
Challenges
When shooting speeches, it can definitely be challenging to get a shot where the subject isn’t looking weird or unflattering due to them being in the middle of talking (mouth shape, hand movements, etc…)
Solutions
We just took a burst of images and tried to listen to the speech to anticipate moments of laughter or emotion
Location
Location Name
The Lazy Olive
Location aDDRESS
The Lazy Olive, Loc. Finerri, 7, 53041 Asciano SI, Italy
Loation Type
Courtyard
Country
Italy
When you’re photographing the speeches, as much as the person giving the speech is important, so are the reactions of the crowd and especially the bride and groom. So, keep your eyes open at all times and try anticipate moments before they happen.
