We had our bride turn her shoulder towards us and bring her face and chin down just so it gently touches the shoulder. Along with this, we wanted to create a “deep, thought provoking mood” and so we simply asked her to close her eyes. We also made sure she kept her bouquet up high so we could keep it in frame.
Turn to your side and have your shoulder towards us. Gently turn your head so your chin touches it. Raise your shoulder slightly and close your eyes
Calm
We wanted to bring the attention straight to this mood and our brides expression. We framed it close up and had her fill the frame diagonally so we had enough room to show where she was amongst the mountains while also keeping the impact on her directly. We wanted to have the bouquet included in the frame and so we made sure she held it high up enough to do so.
Center Framed
Our goal in this shot was to have our couple sharp and on point. We move our single point focus dot over one of their faces so long as they are on the same plain so that we know that their eyes, smile and emotions will be sharp. We do not use back button focusing, so that means we’re always
depressing the shutter button to make sure it’s locking on to our spot.
Single Shot Autofocus
Single Point
The Brides 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.
As the sun was very harsh on this clear sky day, we had to solve this by using a diffuser between our bride and the sun. Its very easy to achieve when you have it as you simply pay attention to where the shadow casted by the diffuser falls on your subject and keep it in position while shooting.
Natural Light
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.
The main challenge we faced here was with the light being incredibly harsh and causing really strong shadows on our bride. Even though we had our bride amongst neutral coloured grounds (which reduced color casts), we still struggled with getting our softly lit portrait without the help from something to shade the sun.
We always keep a diffuser in our car (just above our spare tyre in the boot) as an emergency resort. This diffuser worked wonders for doing the close up bridal portraits – however, as the diffuser is pretty small in comparison to the size of our bride, we couldn’t use it to photograph full body shots. We had to wait until the sun dropped a lot more.
No specific name
Riedboden, mittenwald, germany
Mountains
Germany
If you can, always keep a diffuser or something that you can use as one somewhere handy. In our case, we have a diffuser in our car most of the time and bring it out when its absolutely necessary. It’s an easy to use tool and can pack down quite small so travelling with it is no problem.
When you’re going for a deep mood; try close your brides eyes and even have her relax her smile to the point where she has the tiniest of smirks, or even none at all. Just make sure that she doesn’t look “angry” or “upset”.
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