- Back lit
- Beach
- calm
- Center Framed
- Feet
- Mid range
- Middle Thirds
- Natural
- Rim Light
- sand
- Sunset
- Walking
- windy
The story behind the image
That’s where details came in. It can be simple little things like their feet on the wet sand of the beach, it could be a close up of their hands, just their lips, the eyes – those sort of details. They help to tell a story and can act as a transition piece if need be. That’s why we took these photos of our couple here – we wanted to be able to show the viewers more than just a couple in love. We wanted to show what it felt like to have your bare feet in the sand on a Portuguese beach at sunset with the person you love most.
Directions
Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)
For these shots, we often don’t give too complex directions as it’s best taken when as natural as possible. In this case, we were simply moving from point A to point B, and we just asked our couple to walk together as they would.
What did you say?
Let’s move to our next spot over there. When we’re walking, we’re going to be taking pictures and moving around you so don’t mind us. Just walk as you would and if you ever feel like it, you can move up closer and do what you do
Tone of Directions
Calm
Composition
Composing this shot was quite important because there are a few elements that needed to work quite right. We aligned ourselves so that both our bride and groom fell on an equal column of the image, but also their shadows. The shadow helped to create a straight line from the bottom to the top of the image which basically split it into 3 parts – symmetry.
framing
Center Framed
Focusing
Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)
Focusing on this was pretty simple as we had switched to our live view to help us better see the composition. We moved the focus box over the feet of our bride as we wanted her and her dress to definitely be in focus. We weren’t too concerned about the groom falling out of focus too much.
Focus Mode
Single Shot Autofocus
Focus POints
Single Point
Focused on
The Brides feet
Equipment &
Exif
Camera
Lens
Flash
Filter
1/1000 @ f/2.8 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
This was taken during the most “golden” part of the sunset which was happening just behind them over the ocean. We purposely positioned ourselves to have our couple between us and the sun so we could capture the golden tones on the beach as well as the strong shadows cast by the couple.
Light Type
Natural Light
Time of day
Sunset
Editing Workflow
How did you edit this image?
Editing this shot was very straight forward – we simply added our Protea preset as a base and adjusted the white balance to get the warmth just right. We then tweaked the usual exposure & contrast settings to balance the image and finally we added a slight radial filter to the top to enhance the glow of the sun.
Editing Software
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Preset Used
Challenges
The hardest part with this shot was finding the angle that looked pretty good. It was pretty easy to miss since we were all moving. It was challenging to know whether we should shoot more tilted down, more level, more from the left, or more from the right.
Solutions
What we ended up doing was just shooting as much as we could. We took shots from all angles we thought were good and then realized that the shadows actually were very helpful. So we then focused on shooting where the shadows were leading straight down the image.
Location
Location Name
Praia Da Adraga
Location aDDRESS
PRAIA DA ADRAGA, Sintra, Portugal
Loation Type
Beach / Coastal
Country
Portugal
Capturing details of a shoot isn’t only about necklaces, rings, and makeup – it’s moments. It’s little gestures. It’s movement. When photographing your couple, take a few steps back and really look at what’s happening and find these little “things”. They can make a blog post/story look and feel so much deeper, and so much more “driven”.
Shots like this work best when you couple isn’t “trying” to do something. It very quickly becomes obvious when someone is “trying to walk” a certain way – and so the best bit of advice is to not overthink it and don’t over direct the couple. Simple things like “Let’s walk from here to there, and just be yourselves, don’t mind us, etc…” can really help.
