HOW i SHOT THiS

  • Back lit
  • Center Framed
  • cliff
  • full body
  • High Angle
  • Horizon Line
  • Islands
  • Moody
  • natural frames
  • Natural Light
  • Ocean
  • sea
  • Soft Light
  • Sunset

The story behind the image

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One of the things we are most grateful for being wedding photographers is the fact that we get to see such incredible places, people, and moments. It’s a career we never thought we’d be into (if you asked us a good few years ago) but life has its paths, and we have absolutely no regrets.

When this couple asked us if we’d be keen to travel just north of the Arctic circle in Norway to capture their elopement, how could we resist? We got there a few days early and spent an entire day location scouting and just enjoying the whole experience of being up there. We found this spot, made sure it’d work with the light & then planned everything with our couple on the day of.

They had a beautiful, gentle, self-made ceremony just between themselves. They shared their words, shared their tears, and shared their love and this moment was the conclusive end of their little ceremony. They embraced for a moment, and right then and there – nothing else mattered but them.
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Composition

We found this spot on a hill that gave way to the view of the ocean and the islands. I had the couple stand in the middle of all the landscape features to let them be framed naturally. I also held the camera slightly above my eye level so I could keep them framed within the water as to not have any lines cutting through them.

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framing

Center Framed

Focusing

Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)

Since I had the camera away from my eye, I had to use live view which helped me find this composition a lot easier. Focusing was no problem at all as the couple wasn’t moving too much from their spot, and I could simply keep the focus-box over them without too much effort.

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Focus Mode

Single Shot Autofocus

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
1/4000 @ f/2 ISO1000 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 sun was just out of the left side of the frame and was still relatively high in the sky. The made it quite challenging to capture the full dynamic range of the image as the sun bounced off the water pretty strongly. Because of this, the spot we chose needed to allow us to shoot into the light as we would then photograph the shaded side of them; a much softer light to work with at the expense of losing dynamic range.

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Light Type

Natural Light

Time of day

Sunset

Editing Workflow

How did you edit this image?

Editing this image was definitely a bit more tricky than usual. Since the sun was still quite harsh, it bounced off the ocean water causing a lot of the highlights to almost blow out. After applying our Protea preset, we used our brush tool to paint over the water and make local adjustments to the exposure, saturation, white balance and contrasts to help bring back the detail. The same was applied to the sky and to the couple themselves. We also added in a sun-enhancing radial adjustment to help warm up the light.

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Editing Software
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Preset Used

Challenges

The hardest part was editing this image to bring back details that we felt were important to the overall mood of the image. Since the sun was still quite harsh, the highlights struggled to keep details.

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Solutions

Taking extra time to really focus on adding brush adjustments, radial adjustments and gradient adjustments made all the difference. We broke it down into pieces and slowly built the image up until we liked the result.

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Location

Location Name

Hillesoy

Location aDDRESS

Hillesoy 9110 Sommarøy, Norway

Loation Type

Beach / Coastal

Country

Norway

If you have a tricky image that doesn’t quite follow your usual editing routine, then take a break and come back to it later if you can. Sometimes seeing it with fresh eyes and new energy can be motivating to spend that extra time going into detail to bring out the best of the image.

Absolutely always, always, always do a location scout. Especially when it’s an elopement and your couple have asked you for suggestions on places to go. Make sure you get there a day or so before and have plenty of time to explore different options. Bring sun-tracking apps with you so can also see when and where the sun will be at any given point. Finally, have a backup plan just in case this location is inaccessible on the day you want to shoot.

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