Oh fun, post some of the shots you get. I have some to finish processing then I will be posting some of mine from the wedding I did in Williamsburg.
You ain't kidding! I thought I did but my legs are telling me otherwise~ I've done many but not for a few years now - I think I did good... I have almost 550 pics to edit. How many did you take PM?
The basic album is done, I do hope she likes it~ The progression of a photo...what do you all think? (The bride hasn't seen any yet, I want honest opinions please) I just added the original so you can see where this shot really started~
I think that it came out great! I took just shy of 400, but was not present for the bride getting ready or the groom either. All of my photo's came from the ceremony and reception.
I was almost opposite of you PM, of my 570+ very few were from the actual reception. I tend to be discouraged from taking pictures when there's 50 other people around me taking photos of the exact same thing. Thank you both for your review. My internet has been really spotty all weekend... so while my system was down, I not only finished Missy's wedding album, I made myself a new business card My Mom calls me that title all the time when she talks to folks about my pictures. She got it from my ID tag I aquired over on the DISboards. I know she says it cause she's proud of me - I like the way it looks and sounds. It's so hard to come up with a tag line for a business card for someone like me who dabbles in many, many creative arenas.
The Bride finally has her photos! below is the link to my photobucket page for those who'd like to see how they came out... http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a42/Mo ... ?start=all
Here is an image that I took at the wedding, during photo session. I had a real hard time of trying to not have the sun as strong as it was. This is processed down a bit, but as you can see it is still bad. Any other thoughts? On this one I actually just moved the color bar to the left, and was pleasantly surprised by the results. Same photo, just different finish.
PM, If you are THE photographer, move the group into a shady area. That's the one thing I learned fast when doing weddings, take charge. They are paying you and will listen. That's my suggestion for you.
Yeah unfortunately I wasn't THE photographer, and the woman that was, was actually using an old studio film camera the one with the film box that clips on an off of the back of the camera. She was VERY old school and portrait esk. Next time I will try to "suggest" a change, but this time it was way out of my control. Thanks for the input though Scott.
Do have have the "fill" option ala Photoshop? Maybe that could help bring up the shadowed detail closer to the brighter side's light level. I am wondering, did the official photog have a strong flash to fill in the shadows she created by having such bright light behind the wedding party~
I haven't seen the final photo's yet, so I am not sure. She spent a LOT of time setting up shots and was always worried about bystanders shadows, so I think probably not. I was trying to catch the little girl in the photo for a nice family shot and was just firing away. I think I played with the fill and by increasing it, it had a tendency to blow out the rest of the photo. It is so bad in the original photo that when I put the color dropper on the worst spots, and it is literally pure white. All 3 channels are reading 255. I just wish the bride (my friend) would have picked a better spot at that time of day to have done photo's. Oh well, Thanks for the input. If anyone has any other ideas, I still would appreciate it.
I don't think the location was that bad for the photo. A little fill flash from camera right would have brightened the shadows and solved a lot of the highlight problems. If the highlights are showing up as pure white, I don't think there is anything you can do to correct them. The only thing you can try to do is brighten the shadows so the difference isn't so great. I tried running your photo through the "D Lighting" adjustment in Capture NX2 just to see what would happen. I think it helped some, but not as much as I hoped. [attachment=1] I hoped to bring up the shadows a little more but it when I tried it started to get a little noisy in the darkest areas. Was that taken in front of the Ludwell-Paradise House? [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
What about a portable shade up and to the left, along with gold reflectors lower right off camera to assist in the fill? Either that or a few SB-800/900s on remotes, low to the ground, aiming up, using one on the camera as the controller.
Was that taken in front of the Ludwell-Paradise House? Michael, I am not sure. She picked that spot in colonial Williamsburg simply because of the double staircase. There are much better places to get photo's done, but that was what she wanted, she was just a little bridezilla-ish (ok, a LOT). I was shooting these at 1600 ISO because I wanted to make sure I could catch the little one in the shots before she ran off. Normally with the sun being what it was I would have gone slower, and tried to let more regular light in. For some reason when I took a few of these at slower shutter speeds, it was almost like a slow sync shot, because the lens was staying open for a bit longer, and i was getting motion blur. Though, I am realizing now that that could have also been because I was shooting at f29. Oh well, live and learn. Roger, I am sure that this option would have helped also. I was using my flash to try and compensate, but knew that the little pop-up one on my camera would do little to nothing for me. Thanks for the input guys. As this was my first time shooting something a little more serious than stuff for me or my family, it was interesting to realize just how much you need to think about before just pointing and shooting.
