Erin and Johnny: Part 3

Design at Erin and Johnny's wedding was created by Steven Moore.

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Erin and Johnny: Seattle Wedding Portraits

2009 Wedding Review: Appreciating the Art - Part 4

Catching Up

Before you read any further, you might want to check out the first three parts of this series: Walking - pt. 1, The Moment After - pt. 2, and Posers - pt. 3.

Candid Moments

Today is going to be all about my thought process behind capturing candid moments. I did write a little bit about creating candid moments from what started out as posed moments in pt. 1 and pt. 2, but today I'm going to focus on moments that are actually candid. In other words, basically every image I make during the wedding day that happens outside the portrait sessions.

Jenny and Adrian
This first candid moment happened during Jenny's getting ready shots. Her mother surprised her with a necklace to wear that day.

I love this frame because I didn't have to tell you anything in the previous paragraph. It's clear from the picture exactly what is happening. A great image should be able to speak for itself, without the photographer standing over your shoulder explaining the moment to you. I included this image because it's a classic "candid moment". That is, a completely unposed, unplanned moment, captured photojournalism style.

Now, in these next few images, I'm going to try to break the mold of what a candid image can be.

Here, Jenny and Adrian are walking though a garden area during a quite time before their ceremony. I suppose this image could be considered posed because half the reason they were walking through the garden was so that they could have photographs and video taken of them.

I really didn't give them any instructions though, and I just let them walk and enjoy each other, so this is at least close to candid. In this image, I decided to focus on the tree branches above them in the foreground. This is one example of trying to take a candid moment and see it in an artistic way. There is never much time to do this, but it's a good challenge to add visual variety to candid moments.

Natalie and Sean
I loved this huge mirror in Natalie's waiting room before the ceremony. Then when all her bridesmaids crowded around her and started fussing with her hair, I knew there was a moment here I had to catch.

Any time there is a mirror in a room, I'm going to find a way to use it. They just naturally add so much interest to the final image. Here, I like that the mirror multiplies the number of girls bent over Natalie, and it also allows us to see her face and get a hint of the architecture in the room.

Ryan and Sarah
This candid image is a mixture of luck and skill, like I suppose many images at a wedding are. What really makes this image sing is the setting. Ryan and Sarah chose to have their wedding at the Bellingham Cruise Terminal. The dome of glass behind them let in amazing light all afternoon, and then during the time of the evening when the dance floor is usually crowded with dancers, people just cleared off and made room for Ryan and Sarah. The sky outside hadn't gone completely dark yet and I was able to expose it a couple stops below Ryan and Sarah. I love the reflections in the window of mostly just Ryan and Sarah over and over again. No one else was lit up because my lights weren't pointed at anyone else. Also, Ryan's head is positioned perfectly inside one of the squares of glass - completely uninterrupted. The light turned out working well too, which was a huge pain to achieve inside a glass ceilinged dome.

So, while this image of Sarah and Ryan dancing had a lot to do with luck, it also wouldn't have worked if I didn't have the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, lens, on camera flash, and off camera flash dialed in to where I needed them before the moment happened. Mastery of equipment allows lucky moments to happen.

Heather and Dave
Even though this final image is candid, I still spent about five minutes setting it up. I took Mindy outside with me to test my flash strength both on camera and off camera (you can see the rays of light from the off camera flash coming down above Dave's head.) I knew they were going to be moving and I knew they were going to have lines of people on either side of them. I decided to close down the aperture of a wide angle lens in order to get the crowd more in focus and run backwards about 10 feet in front of them the last half of the exit.

The shot worked, and again thinking though this candid moment ahead of time and understanding how my equipment works enabled me to get the shot I had planned on.

2009 Wedding Review: Appreciating the Art - Pt. 3

Posers

Yesterday I wrote about capturing emotion and personality in candid moments just before or after the posed photos. Today I'm going to show a number of posed images and explain a bit of the story behind each of them. I'm not going to show the difference between final and proof images as I have in previous posts because I find myself saying the same things over and over again. If you'd like to see the difference between a proof image and a final image check out my posts on "Walking" and "The Moment After".

Jenny and Adrian

We'll start pretty simply. Jenny and Adrian had an incredible wedding with interesting details at every point throughout the day. One of those details were these big balloons that were guiding guests from their cars to the ceremony site. Jenny asked if they could have a picture with one. I took several, and while this is clearly not a candid moment between two people, the balloon adds enough interest and quirkiness that the image still draws some emotion from the viewer.

This next image is also of Jenny and Adrian and while it may look candid it is actually posed. Jenny and Adrian sat patiently while Mindy and I rigged the lights to work properly in this very dark bar area of the Arctic Club in Seattle. The people next to them are actually the band they hired, and they just happened to be at the bar before they went on.

This shot works because of the repeating patterns of the bodies and the bottles, interesting, directional light (thanks Mindy), and a moment that appears timeless and un-posed.

Sarah and Ryan
From a photography perspective everything just clicked on Sarah and Ryan's wedding day. Great locations, great weather, people willing to pose, and a bit of luck made for an amazing day full of memorable images.

For this shot, we were shooting outside at another location and a woman walking by just mentioned that she and her husband owned a Persian rug shop just around the corner and we could shoot in there if we wanted. Well, we jumped on the opportunity and when I asked if they could climb up on this table to pose, not only did the owner say yes, but he brought in more rugs and helped arrange them for the perfect shot.

And while this is a very striking and unique location, would this frame really be anything at all without the attitude that Sarah and Ryan brought to this image?

This next image is Sarah again, this time with her bridesmaids. She mentioned how the bridesmaid's dresses had pockets and so I thought I would try to highlight that feature by cutting off the girls' heads and making this frame just about the clothing. Like the Persian rugs, this image has a unique element that adds interest, but what really makes it a great image is the posing. I have to say I didn't do much as far as posing these girls. I simple said something like, "Give me your sexy model pose!"

Again, everything just came together perfectly. This photo is all about the little details: The tweaked ankle of the girl on the far right, the flowers, Sarah's yellow toed shoe poking out from beneath her dress, the pockets of course, and again, the raw attitude the girls were willing to bring to the image.

Lisa and Brandon
Many times in the portrait sessions, certain elements aren't exactly how I would like them. Sometimes I need people to move a bit, sometimes I need to change lenses, sometimes the background is distracting. So during the bride and groom portrait session I often have to choose between taking the time to make that certain element right, or moving on to get as much variety as we can in the limited time we have.

I've never regretted taking the time to tweak an image a bit to make it conform to my vision. In this case, I had the Rolls Royce positioned to take portraits from the front of the car. However, as we were taking their portraits, Lisa and Brandon's parents kept asking them to do a "dutch kiss". I'd never seen this before but I thought it was hilarious and I immediately knew I wanted them to do it perfectly squared in front of the car. That meant that I had to ask Lisa's dad to move the car "just a bit" for a third time. Yes, I risked being a pain, but he was fine with it and I never would have had this image if I hadn't taken the time to adjust the reality of the situation to my vision of the image.

This next image certainly looks pretty candid, and it certainly carries the emotion many candid moments carry. However, this image happened because the girls were told to kiss Lisa. Just a reminder that posed images don't have to feel posed.

Natalie and Sean
On Natalie and Sean's wedding day we were behind schedule. For various reasons we only had about 20 minutes for a bride and groom session. So, after the group portraits we sneaked in a few more bride and groom portraits and this is one that came from that time. I was taking some fine, but fairly standard images with a long portrait lens (85mm), but I decided to see what I would see with a wide 17mm view, and when I looked through the viewfinder this is what I saw. Needless to say, I was glad I took the time to experiment even though we were a bit rushed for time.