- Candles
- Center Framed
- Ceremony
- First Kiss
- full body
- holding each other
- Indoor
- Leading lines
- Soft Light
- Wide
The story behind the image
There was absolutely no influence from us in this image. The couple, obviously with a connection so incredibly strong, simply took this brief moment of peace just ‘be’ with each other. We saw this happen, moved into position, and took a huge series of images. Fortunately, they took their time here – so we were able to capture all sorts of shots from this moment. It’s a moment we won’t forget; it was just that moving for us.
Composition
We chose to share this composition because we felt that it ticked off all the boxes in what we wanted. Not too much of the whole scene for our couple & their moment to get lost, wide enough to have them full-body, but close up enough to see the Brides stunning smile. As their chairs were situated on either side of them, although moved out of symmetry, we chose Portrait for this composition. We didn’t want to run up and disturb them by moving things so this was our go-to solution.
framing
Center Framed
Focusing
Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)
Since we were shooting a few meters away, where we actually focused on our couple wasn’t too important since the focal length of the 50mm becomes more forgiving the further away you are from your subjects. In this case, we shot with the live view as it generally allows us to see our compositions much faster and we are quite a bit more flexible with how we can position our camera (especially when we want to be fast).
Focus Mode
Live View Single Shot
Focus POints
Single Point
Focused on
The couple
Equipment &
Exif
Camera
Lens
Flash
Filter
1/1000 @ f/2.5 ISO1250 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
As this was taken inside a church, the light was actually super, super beautiful to work with. There were quite a few big windows quite high up which filled the room with enough soft light to make exposing this image easy. We of course had no control over how or where our couple stood in relation to the light, and so we didn’t need to pay much attention to it.
Light Type
Candles
Weather
Indoor
Editing Workflow
How did you edit this image?
This was definitely one of the easier shots to edit as the light inside the church was beautiful. As it is almost all the time. We used our Protea presets, adjusted the exposure and contrasts to balance the image, and then went in and added in a few radial adjustments to create a manual vignette, as well as paint a very gentle beam of light coming down from the top left, as that’s where the light was softly coming from. Finally, we topped it all off with our grain preset to add a bit of texture to the whole image.
Editing Software
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Preset Used
Challenges
What’s challenging in moments like this is to not disturb the couple. There already was a bit of noise from the guests leaving the room, but we needed to be extra careful to not ‘pull them out of it’.
Solutions
By making very gentle, and soft movements we were able to not disturb our guests, and we kept our communication to zero. Both Melli & I knew what was happening and didn’t need to say anything in order to coordinate these images.
Location
Location Name
Lutherische Pfarrkirche St. Marien
Location aDDRESS
Lutherische Pfarrkirche St. Marien Marburg Lutherischer Kirchhof 1, 35037 Marburg
Loation Type
Church
Country
Germany
One piece of advice we love to give our couples who want to have an exit from a Church ceremony is to let the guests go outside first (weather permitting) as it’s a great place to have them exit through the doors to be welcomed by the cheering guests. It also allows a bunch more space for everyone to move around. But another benefit to this is that it allows your couple a moment together in peace before the craziness of the party begins.
Take advantage of this moment with your couple, and if you find that they are not sure what to do with themselves when they are alone – then by all means step in and suggest a few poses/moments for them. Otherwise, let them be them and try not to interfere too much.
