HOW i SHOT THiS

  • 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

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Our couple got married in the always-stunning Portugal and wanted to take advantage of all the beauty the country had to offer. Instead of spending a chunk of time away from their guests on their wedding the day before, they were totally open to the idea of doing an after wedding shoot.

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.
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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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Focus Mode

Live View Continuous

Focus POints

Single Point

Focused on

The couple

Equipment &
Exif

Camera
Canon 5D mark IV
Lens
Canon 35mm f/1.4 L II
Flash
None
Filter
None
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.

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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.

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Editing Software
Adobe Lightroom Classic

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.

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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.

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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.

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