- After Wedding
- Movement
- Water
- Sunset
- silhouette
- running
- Rim Light
- Portugal
- Playful
- Natural Light
- Landscape
- Back light
- Horizon Line
- Harsh Light
- Funny
- full body
- Free
- Energetic
- Center Framed
- Beach
- Back lit
- Wide
The story behind the image
To us, that was like winning the jackpot. We got to location scout a kickass beach, find the right time & place to take them, and then photograph until the sun had literally disappeared without feeling stressed that we had to get them back somewhere on time.
We always try and pitch the idea of an after wedding shoot to most of our couples – especially those having a destination wedding since it opens up a lot more chances for awesome pictures & a more relaxed timeline for their wedding. It’s not even about the sale so much. It’s just such a wonderful thing to do when you’re in control of the important things such as the location & time.
Directions
Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)
We asked our couple to hold hands and run towards the water, to stop just by the edge and run away from the shore break. Just like kids would.
What did you say?
Remember as kids when you used to chase the water & run away from it as it came back? Yeah? That’s exactly what I want you guys to do! Holds and go get that water! Go! And don’t let it catch either of you!
Composition
Since this was a pretty chaotic shot to photograph as we were running with our couple, we found it easiest to keep them in the center of the frame as much as possible. The fact that the scenery was also pretty minimal in its elements (beach, water, little island & the sun), we felt it made more sense to have our couple be the leading role in this composition.
framing
Center Framed
Focusing
Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)
Focusing when running can definitely be tricky at times. For this shot, we switched to live view and set our camera to “AI-Servo”, which is our camera’s focus tracking mode. We did this because there wasn’t a lot of elements in the frame that the camera could get fooled into focusing on.
Focus Mode
Live View Continuous
Focus POints
Single Point
Focused on
The couple
Equipment &
Exif
Camera
Lens
Flash
Filter
1/1000 @ f/2 ISO100 WB-Shade
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
Since the sun was setting over the ocean, we had to keep the fact that we’d be backlighting them for this shot in mind. We didn’t want to blow out the sky since we wanted to keep the warmth of the sun present in the image. We underexposed enough to keep the details visible as much as possible so we could have a bit more flexibility when editing later on.
Light Type
Natural Light
Time of day
Sunset
Editing Workflow
How did you edit this image?
The edits are made to be warmer with a big focus on skin tones and light play with shadows and highlights. A few minor local adjustments were made (Gradient and Brush) as well as finishing off with a fine layer of grain. The whites are not blown out nor are the blacks 100% crunched.
Editing Software
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Preset Used
Challenges
The hardest part of this was keeping up with our couple and making sure we weren’t running too chaotically to get decent images.
Solutions
We found that asking them to not be too fast, and to go more for a playful jog rather than a full on sprint, helped us have a pace that was enough to keep our cameras relatively steady.
Location
Location Name
Praia Da Adraga
Location aDDRESS
PRAIA DA ADRAGA, Sintra, Portugal
Loation Type
Beach / Coastal
Country
Portugal
After wedding shoots are one of our personal favorite things to shoot; so much so that we put a lot of effort into marketing them and pitching them to our clients. Of course, not every couple is open to the idea but it’s always worth a shot.
If you do manage to land an after wedding shoot, make sure you take full advantage of it and put in the work to find the locations, the best times, the best spots, and everything else that will make you come back home with kickass shots.
