Bridal Portrait
Would you trust anyone to take your Bride & Groom portraits on one of the most important days of your life?
You can find many discussions on forums about getting an amateur friend to photograph your wedding. With digital SLRs now starting at well under £1000 with auto everything how difficult can it be?
It is a compelling argument but the camera is actually one of the least important factors in creating your beautiful Wedding Photography. Good quality professional lenses are far more important in capturing high quality images. The prices of professional lenses start upwards of £1000 putting them out of reach of most amateur photographers.
But that is not even the start of the story.
Let’s look at what goes into creating your amazing fine art portraits – without getting too technical. Different professional photographers will vary in their approaches and work flows but the fundamentals will be the same.
One wedding client's testimonial
All great images have three things in common; light, posing and composition, which are all huge subjects in their own right. If these are not captured in the camera it will not be possible to create your beautiful images to hang on the wall at home!
The process starts with selecting a location taking into account lighting and background. Using natural light and perhaps a reflector for reflect some light back under your eyes usually gives the best results.
Having decided where to place you, you will then be posed. A flow-posing system is used that allows a series of images to be taken very quickly. It also means images can be repeated. You can expect images very similar to the ones that you saw before booking your wedding photographer.
Many images in my flow posing system are designed to emulate the very best in photojournalism. Therefore you can enjoy the crucial moments of the day without being constantly interrupted.
Your posing is made easy through my guidance and use of specialised equipment.
My camera is mounted on a specialised tripod enabling your images to be taken swiftly. Using professional lenses selective focus is used giving a minimal depth of field (the distance that is considered acceptably sharp) as little as 1cm! This is used for separation of you from the background. And it creates that wonderful romantic dreamy look you love. Shallow depth of field allows your eyes to be sharp whilst your skin is gently softened due to not being absolutely sharp in close-up shots. As you can imagine the camera needs to be rock steady and correct focusing is vital.
The tripod also enables the composition to be accurately created and maintained in the camera. And finally it liberates me to assist you. There is nothing worse than guiding people with cameras swinging around and bumping into you.
You now have your correctly exposed and correctly focused image captured in the camera’s memory. This is your digital negative and starting point for transforming the image into a piece of fine art.
Ignoring all the processes in between such as getting the image stored on hard disk with backup, we will continue work on the image once loaded on the PC.
Contemporary Bride & Groom Portrait
The next step is to fine tune the digital negative with colour correction and cropping into the pre-visualised format.
Many photographers will also need to do spot removal at this point. You may have heard about this before if you have amateur photographer friends. This process hides spots of dirt that exist in every picture due to dirt on the camera’s sensor. I rarely need to do this as all my cameras sensors are checked before your wedding and cleaned to be spotless. All my lenses are cleaned appropriately too as part of my pre-wedding preparations.
At this point I select the best images for further attention in Photoshop. These are the images that will be transformed into works of fine art that will look fantastic hanging on your walls as large framed prints or canvasses.
Once in Photoshop each image is skilfully retouched using a series of specialised Photoshop actions especially designed for portraiture. Spots can be removed, eyes and teeth whitened, air brushing, dodging & burning and a myriad of other options to create the final digital image.
You are invited to view your wedding photos for the first time. This is done with an amazing multimedia slide show. You select your images for your wedding album and large framed prints and/or canvasses. All done in the relaxed atmosphere of our home studio without any hard sales pitch. The pictures sell themselves.
Your images selected for printing will then have some final work done to ensure the highest possible quality in your final products.
We use a top UK processing company that has been an industry leader for over 30 years. They supply all our prints, canvases, framing and finest quality wedding albums that are available anywhere. This ensures consistency across our range of products giving you confidence in your investments.
Finally the moment you have been waiting for arrives.
Your products arrive!
We give you the call to let you know your products are ready for collection. We can also send them to you for an additional fee.
You have complete confidence when investing in our products as finest quality is assured and your satisfaction 100% guaranteed.
I hope you found this article interesting. And perhaps a little eye opening when you consider what goes into creating each and every image from your wedding.
If you have not done so already, sign up for your definitive FREE eWedding Course
You will receive a series of my articles compiled to help brides-to-be. With articles on planning, saving money, etiquette and much more besides – genuinely helping you have a successful day.
A fantastic wedding day you will remember for all the right reasons.
Just enter your name and email below and I’ll send you them and others as I find them.
|
|
Just in case you were wondering, I will never rent, sell or spam your email address. I will only use it to send you useful information relevant to making your wedding the best it can be. And at any time you can remove your name from the list.
Wishing you the very best for your special day.
Related Posts
Want to save money on your wedding? You're in luck - find out how to save money, plan your green wedding, use correct etiquette, choose your wedding photographer and much much more as a series of FREE articles.
Click here to save money on your wedding and much more.
Bookmark and promote!
