HOW i SHOT THiS

  • broken rules
  • calm
  • Center Framed
  • Cloudy
  • full body
  • Jokes
  • Laughing
  • Leading lines
  • Natural
  • Natural Light
  • Neutral Colors
  • Outdoor
  • Shade
  • Soft Light
  • Walking

The story behind the image

Show more
Being prepared is aboslutely key to a lot of things in this industry. One surefire way of doing just that is location scouting; ideally a day or so before the wedding so you can really take your time to explore all what the location has to offer. In our case, we spent the afternoon the day before walking around the castle and planning our shots. We also happened to meet up with our couple there too which was so awesome; we broke the ice and the whole wedding ran even smoother! Location scouting shouldn’t ever be a chore, it should be exciting :)
Show more

Directions

Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)

Have your couple walk towards you and get your groom to throw in some jokes. Tell him that it’s his job right now to make his bride laugh, and smile and feel silly. While your bride is walking, ask her to hold her bouquet in her free hand and her other hand to hold her grooms.

Show more
What did you say?

Walk towards us you guys, and make her laugh! Throw in some jokes! Even naughty jokes! we can’t hear you! Thats a lie, we can hear everything!

Show more
Tone of Directions

Calm

Composition

While exploring the wedding location, we found this beautiful path that was outlined by these trees. Immediately we knew what sort of composition we’d be going for here. However, just to the right and left of this path is a golf course which didn’t quite fit in with the mood we were going for. By framing this image in a portrait orientation we were able to hide all those distracting elements while also creating leading lines with the help of the pathway.

Show more
framing

Center Framed

Focusing

Describe how you spoke to your subject(s)

When our subjects walk, especially towards or away from us, it can be a bit tough on your camera to maintain that lock while you’re in the single point auto focus. Cameras these days have some pretty intelligent modes that can attempt to track your subjects (just like in sports) so make sure you’re familiar with those modes before you go and shoot. They could mean the difference between beautifully sharp & focussed images or missed shots.

Show more
Focus Mode

Single Shot Autofocus

Focus POints

Multi Point

Focused on

The Brides face

Equipment &
Exif

Camera
Canon 5D Mark IV
Lens
Canon 35mm f/1.4 L II
Flash
None
Filter
None
1/500 @ f/2.2 ISO100 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

We had a relatively clear sky in the mid to late afternoon which meant the light was not exactly the easiest to work with. We found this path that had these neutral colored stones which worked so well to our benefit. The light bounces off of them filling in the shadows quite a bit while also not creating too strong of color cast.

Show more
Light Type

Natural Light

Weather

Editing Workflow

How did you edit this image?

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.

Show more
Editing Software
Preset Used

Challenges

The biggest challenge we faced here was hiding the golf course on either side of the path. We couldn’t venture too far down the path nor could we shoot this in landscape orientations. This, along with the sun being quite high in sky still meant that we confined ourselves to this area on these neutral colored stones.

Show more

Solutions

The solution was simple; frame and compose the image so that we hide the golf course. We did this by shooting in portrait as well as varying our lens choices. With our couple on the neutral colored stones, we were also able to soften the overall light on our couple since the light bounces off of the stones, and fills in the shadows.

Show more

Location

Location Name

Schloss Freudenstein

Location aDDRESS

Str. Masaccio, 39057 Appiano sulla strada del vino BZ, Italy

Loation Type

Road

Country

Italy

Some castles are not open to the public, and reaching out to the owners via their website is always worth a shot. Especially if you’re planning to shoot something there and would be willing to let them use your images to help market their venue.

Read More

Login to your account

Oh no :(

This content has been marked as Premium and requires an active subscription in order to access it. We’re so sorry about that. But hey, here’s what you can do:

Join the
family

Get access to everything on the site as well as a ton of perks & benefits.

Have an account?

Well then, let’s get you logged in and hide this annoying thingy-ma-jig.