We had our guy hang out with his coconut as chilled as he could, while we asked our girl to move in and gently cuddle him from the side. We asked her to keep her one hand on his chest, and the other around his neck and to focus on each other. Even whisper something sweet here and there.
Guys the light here is stunning. [guy], hang tight just where you are and [Girl], if you came in from the side and embraced him while having your hand on his chest (demonstrated it to them) and the other around his neck. That’ll look stunning! And just enjoy that moment together – even whisper something to each other that will make you smile.
Calm
We chose to shoot this in portrait because there was a ton of ‘features’ of the village all around us and since the moment & the emotion between our couple was the main focus – we didn’t want anything to take away from that. We filled the frame about 4/5ths with our couple leaving just enough breathing room above them and to the sides. We are a bit regretful that we chopped off our guys feet though – we didn’t see that when shooting :(
Center Framed
Since shooting into the sun often causes problems with focusing, what we did was bend ourselves slightly lower than our couple so we could hide the sun entirely behind them then slowly moved back up to our composition while holding the focus and fired away.
Single Shot Autofocus
Single Point
The Guy's Face
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.
We had our couple stand directly in front of where the sun was setting so we could let the sun peak over their heads and create this gorgeous golden flair. Since shooting into the sun means the side of our couple visible to us is completely in the ‘shade’, they had really a really soft skin to edit.
Natural Light
Sunset
Sunny
To edit this shot, we added our protea preset but reduced a lot of the oranges, reds, and yellows as things became a bit too saturated. We reduced the luminance of the oranges quite a bit to try and give a more muted, tanned tone to their skins which were closer to their true color. We adjusted the usual exposure sliders to get the overall mood of the image and finally ended off with some light dodging and burning as well as a cheeky little sun enhancing radial filter.
The only challenge we had with this shot was focusing as shooting directly into the sun does cause problems for the camera.
We solved it simply by lowering ourselves slightly to completely hide the sun behind our couple, focus, and then recomposed back to our initial composition while holding down the focus.
Paje Village
Paje, Zanzibar, Tanzania
Village
Tanzania
One thing this shoot taught us was to just go for it. Ask that cute couple if they’d be keen for a shoot and if they say no, well – no one was hurt. But if they say yes – then you’ve just landed up a fun little project. Just go for it.
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