Often when I’m at weddings I like to show the bride or groom or guest an image or two off the back of my camera. Sometimes I’m so excited I just have to show someone. [ASIDE: I'm not the gushing emotional type, so what is uber excitement to me, might come off strikingly similar to a simple smile to you.] At other times I do it to boost the confidence of the person I’m shooting. I want them to see how great they look in the hands of someone that knows how to make them look their best. IOW, I want to build trust.

That said, I show images off my camera against my better judgement. The reason is actually pretty simple: I feel like it fosters the idea that we photographers take all these photos at your wedding and then we go home, download the images from the cards, then upload them to facebook or twitter or whatever proofing system we use. I mean, it can’t be THAT hard to press the upload button, can it?

See It In Your Head
If you’ve read my previous posts about how I process images behind the scenes, you know that couldn’t possibly be farther from the truth. A lot of the time when I’m shooting and deciding how I want to frame a photo or what exposure I want, I’m not thinking about what the image will look like when I click the shutter. No, I’m thinking about what type of photo is going to make it the easiest for me to get to the image I see in my head once I take the image home, process it in Lightroom (and maybe Photoshop) and output it. In other words, I see the final result in my head and work backwards.

If you saw one of my previous posts, you saw the image of Nikki standing in front of a large set of french doors…

So here we have Nikki standing in front of those same doors. But here’s the problem: the blazing sun outside is AT LEAST 5 or 6 stops brighter than she is standing inside this comparatively dark room. I knew I didn’t want to create a “properly” exposed image. If I wanted to do that, I would have set the camera so the outside looks correct and then light Nikki up with a death ray flash pop that would probably send my flash in for service when I got done.

Not very compelling is it? No, I wanted to create Nikki engulfed in that light.

Know Your Gear
One way to do that is simply to overexpose the image so much that Nikki begins to look “normal” while the rest of the image blows out to pure white. One problem with that approach is that once the detail is gone, it’s gone. In this case, I’m dealing with a white dress and a fairly dark-skinned bride so that approach makes it nearly impossible to preserve the dress detail and brighten Nikki enough at the same time. The other problem with that approach is simply dealing with lens flare issues and the loss of contrast that come with it.

So I decided to split the difference. IOW, I didn’t care about the details in the trees outside, but I DID care about her dress and I know the Nikon D3 well enough to know that it preserves an amazing amount of detail in the shadows. More importantly, I know how to get all those details back using Adobe Lightroom. So this is what is going through my head when I’m telling a bride to “turn around and face me but try to twist at the hips.” And here’s the image I was seeing in my head, the same image as above but processed in Lightroom…

Everything you see above is straight Lightroom. Zero Photoshop. In addition to pushing and pulling the exposure of the image, I rotated it ever so slightly so the railing is level and I added two masks: one to increase the contrast in her face that was lost to flare and another to add color saturation to her flowers. Oh, and I toned the image slightly in the split toning panel.

Bottom Line
Know your gear! Every system (be it a camera/lens, strobes, printers, whatever) has strengths and weaknesses. I know what the Nikon D3 can give me and I know where it fails. Once you get there, you can take artistic advantage of it’s strengths and in some cases, even the weaknesses. Go out and shoot!

For the technical among you, here are all the relevant adjustments in Lightroom:

Not so with Shelly and Sam! They were relaxed and confident the moment we arrived at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park last month. The main lawn of the park was closed for an event that day but we had a great time and there are plenty of places all around the park and next door at the World of Coke.

I can’t wait for their wedding next July with Lindsay Pitt from Toast Signature Celebrations coordinating everything.

Don’t they look like they’re having so much fun just hanging out together?!!

So I was a little reticent about posting the full blog post on the front page of my wedding blog since some people are sensitive about those things and don’t want to see images of blood and guts when they came to see happy, pretty people in love and passionate about the love of their life.

But if you came to see blood and guts just click the link below. You know you want to. The curiosity is killing you…

View the full ZOMBIE KILLERS blog post complete with violence, blood and gore.
[You were warned]

They could not have been more relaxed and fun on their wedding day. My associate Huy and I had a great time documenting their wedding day at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. It’s nice to have everything taking place in one location so we don’t have to worry about transportation between sites. Gail Johnson and her fabulous team from Wedding Soiree in Atlanta were on hand to keep the entire day stress free!

Enjoy the photo sneak peek!

Here’s Nikki vogue’ing it up like a super model as she puts her dress on.

How sweet is this photo? She’s helping with the long veil as Nikki has it placed.

Congratulations Nikki & David!

The pre-ceremony images you see below were taken at the beautiful Georgian Terrace Hotel. The ceremony was held at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in downtown Atlanta and the reception followed at the Piedmont Driving Club. Many kudos to Lisanne and her team from Watermark Weddings who all did a fantastic job of keeping everything on track.

So without further ado, take a look and let me know what you think in the comments below!

Congratulations Jennifer & Brandon!

Such was the case with House of Raaj. In their words: “House of Raaj is the FIRST and ONLY company that offers an online borrowing experience to its members with a large collection of celebrity designer sarees and authentic jewelry in 22kt gold, precious stones & certified diamonds.“

Raj, the owner, asked me to bring in makeup and hair and naturally I thought of Raney O’Keefe, whose work I really admire. It was two long days of shooting images for catalog and a few select shots to use for marketing and advertising placement. It was a pleasure working with Viktoria Pleshakova . . . having an experienced professional model always makes the shoot go smoother and faster.

P.S. As you may have noticed already, the logo on these images is different. It’s a sneak peek at the re-branding and website redesign we’ve been working on behind the scenes. Enjoy . . .

So here’s the cover we shot for the Occasions Magazine Fall 2001 Issue, shot at Foxhall Resort & Sporting Club with Bold American providing florals and decor. There’s more design goodness inside the magazine but we can only show the cover for now…

Looks simple huh?

So this where we started…

There were two big problems with Plan A: the SCREAMING late afternoon sunlight streaming in from the right side; and the general busy-ness of the background.

Solution to problem #1

I call it the wall of light. If you have lights already it costs you next to nothing: it’s just a big white sheet. It does two things… first, it serves as a huge scrim to block the sun (plus, it saves my assistants arms) and second, it becomes a 9 foot softbox when you light it from the other side, i.e. a wall of light. The reason I like the wall of light is because it preserves contrast in the scene (provided your wall of light is bright enough compared to whatever is on the other side) while leaving almost no shadows. In other words, it doesn’t look like you lit it at all. And that is pretty much always my goal.

So here it is: two Alien Bee 400s at roughly 1/4 power each, both firing off a Vagabond Mini Lithium battery, and a big white sheet I stole out of the laundry room at home. Impressive huh?

You’ve seen the wall of light before, here…

…and here…

…and a few other places I’m sure.

Solution to problem #2

So while I was setting up the wall of light, Heather was busy find a new vantage point with a better background, and here it is. What do you notice about these two images below?

The only difference between the two images above is the focal point: the left image is focused on the foreground plate/flower and the right image is focused on the chair. Look at the background. See how big a difference 3 feet can make on the overall “look” of the background?

I’m shooting at f/5 because I know that even at f/16 or f/22 I probably can’t get the entire table in focus (plus, shooting that stopped down will change the entire character of the image in a lot of ways) and at f/2 or f/2.8 my depth of field is so razor thin that it would be a pain to work with in post… so f/5 is a nice compromise.

30 or 40 images later we had the table decor exactly how we wanted it. So I got my tripod set up and took 5 images, each focusing on different elements of the table: the front of the foreground plate, the back of the foreground plate, the wine glass and flowers, the background plate, and the chair. Here they are laid out in Photoshop.

Here’s a little fun fact. Somewhere in the shuffle somebody moved the forks and forgot to put them back. Luckily, I had an earlier image of the forks and I managed to insert them. That is the only difference between the image above and the one below.

Here are images 2, 3, 4 and 5 with the background removed so you can see the pieces I took from each image.

And here’s the final image with a few touchups to the table cloth.

Whew!

A few blog posts ago I posted Angel & The Fretz’s engagement session where we pulled off our take on the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World imagery… The Most Interesting Groom in the World…

A number of you didn’t catch on immediately that both of the girls in the shot above are, in fact, Angel: Black Angel and Turquoise Angel. And that my friends, is what this post is all about.

Once I decided on a pose, we grabbed the first shot. I originally intended this to be a landscape shot, hence the angle of view, and I also needed to give myself a little room to crop and move things around so I shot a little wider than I needed to.

RAW Shot #1

While Angel ran off to change, I told Fretz to just sit still and chill… and when she returned we captured the second image.

RAW Shot #2

Now the astute among you will notice that the bottle in his hand above is a Bud, not a Dos Equis. Who would have thunk that there wasn’t a Dos Equis in sight at the 5 Paces? The bar staff searched high and low and eventually went out to find a Dos Equis for us. They actually LEFT to go and find one for us! How cool is that?!

So they returned with the right brew and I grabbed a third shot solely for the purpose of swapping out the beer bottle later.

RAW Shot #3

This is where the fun begins… I needed to decide which Fretz I wanted to keep. I chose the Fretz from RAW Shot #1 above which meant the only thing I need from RAW Shot#2 below is Turquoise Angel, and here she is.

Then I layered RAW Shot #2 above it…

… and proceeded to “paint in” the Turquoise Angel using a layer mask to “reveal” the layer below it (i.e. the Turquoise Angel). Here is what the mask looks like when it is complete.

Now it was time to deal with the beer bottle. The first thing I did was take the Dos Equis bottle and match the size and angle to the master shot. Here is a shot of the [rather sloppily cut out] bottle side by side with the first bottle so you can see where it’s going to be placed.

And here it is in place. Keep in mind that we are zoomed in over 200% so the artifacting and edges you see (a) will not show up at normal size and (b) are exaggerated by the sharpening that is part of my blog posting process.

By far, the hardest part of this image was getting the beer bottle to NOT look like it was floating out there in space. One thing that I know from old Mickey Mouse bits was that one of the primary visual clues the brain uses to determine spacial placement is the presence of shadows. So the answer was adding a near-black shadow right below and to the left of the bottle.

So I put it all together, add a little more photoshop magic to give it the overall emotion and feel I want, and we have…

If you have any comments or questions, please let me know in the comments below!

So Jennifer and Brandon were a bit nervous… having never been there before, I went around the back of Summerour to see what I had to work with, scenery-wise, and when I returned this is what I find!

They are such naturals in front of the camera but I don’t think they believed me when I told them how awesome they were doing.

After a while I just let them play…

As the sun fell behind the tree line we decided to head over to the bridge by Atlantic Station in midtown.

I left them on one of the overlooks and crawled into the bushes to find the vantage point I wanted… I’m glad nobody mistook me for some unsavory, creepy guy with a big camera and called the police!

I love how Jennifer admires her ring all subtle-like…

I can’t wait for their wedding next month at Sacred Heart Catholic Church and the Piedmont Driving Club.

They wanted to do their engagement session where they first met. So off we went to the dive bar of dive bars, the 5 Paces Bar which is a block from the St Regis right in the heart of Buckhead. They let us have the run of the entire bar since they weren’t open just yet. We had this idea to pull off their take on the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World and this is what we came up with. As you know, the Most Interesting Groom in the World can’t have just one Angel, he has to have two. I posted this sneak peak photo a few weeks ago (I’ll probably make another blog post about exactly how we did this shot):

If there’s one thing I try to do, it’s capture images that look natural and compelling as if you just stumbled into a moment. To do that, as a photographer, you have to work with or against the lighting available to you, and in some cases create the scene entirely on your own. This was all three! Now shooting in a dark bar has it’s own set of challenges, but when you have afternoon sun streaming in both entrances it’s even harder to make it look like a dimly lit bar.

This is the spot, right in between the back door and the bathrooms where they met for the first time…

So here we go… enjoy a few more images!