The Best of Wedding Photography.pdf - Free

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take up more room on media storage cards and they take longer to write to the cards. As a result, many wedding photographers find it more practical to shoot JPEGs and perfect the color balance when creating the exposure, much like shooting conventional transparency film with its unforgiving latitude. This topic is covered in greater detail below. A system that many pros follow is to take a custom white balance of a scene where they are unsure of the lighting mix. By selecting a white area in the scene and neutralizing it with a custom white-balance setting, you can be assured of an accurate color rendition. Others swear by a device known as the Wallace Expo- Disc (www.expodisc.com), which attaches to the the lens like a filter. You take a white-balance reading with the disc in place and the lens pointed at your scene. It is highly accurate in most situations and can also be used for exposure readings. SHARPENING AND CONTRAST Image sharpening should be set to off or minimal. Sharpening is usually the last step before output and should be done in Photoshop where there is optimum control. Contrast should also be adjusted to the lowest setting. According to California wedding photographer Becker, “It’s always easy to add contrast later, but more difficult to take away.” White balance is crucial to good exposure technique, particularly when shooting JPEG files. A situation like this, with mixed lighting in varying degrees, calls for a custom white balance to be sure your colors are accurate. Photograph by Tibor Imely. FILE FORMAT RAW retain the highest amount of image data from the original capture. While not as forgiving as color negative film, RAW files can be “fixed” to a much greater degree than JPEGs. If you shoot in RAW mode, you should back up the RAW files as RAW files; these are the original images and contain the most data. Shooting in the RAW mode has several drawbacks, however. First, it requires the use of RAW file-processing software to translate the file information and convert it to a useable format. Also, if you are like most wedding photographers and need fast burst rates, RAW files will definitely slow you down. In addition, they will fill up your storage cards or microdrives much more quickly than JPEGs because of their larger file size. Your other file option is shooting in the JPEG Fine mode (sometimes called JPEG Highest Quality mode). Shooting in JPEG mode creates smaller files, so you can save more images per media card or microdrive. It also does not take as long to write the JPEG files to memory and allows you to work much more quickly. The biggest drawback to JPEG files is that they are a “lossy” format, meaning that since the JPEG format compresses file information, these files are subject to degradation by repeated saving. Most photographers who shoot in JPEG mode either save the file as a copy each time they work on it, or save it to the TIFF format, which is “lossless,” meaning it can be saved again and again without degradation.
Since most wedding photographers opt for speed and flexibility, most shoot in the JPEG Fine mode. Because there is less data preserved in this format, however, your exposure and white balance must be flawless. In short, the JPEG format will reveal any weakness in your technique. 46 THE BEST OF WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY David Williams made this beautiful image with a fixed focal length Sigma 15mm f/2.8 EX DG fisheye lens and a Fujifilm Finepix S2 Pro camera. There are many pros that maintain that, because a fixed focal length lens is optimized for one focal length, it provides the optimal optical results. FILE MAINTENANCE It is extremely important to back up your original (source) files before you reuse your CF cards. A good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, asked his assistant to download and reformat the cards at the wedding only to find out later that the cards had been reformatted but the image files had not been saved. There were no wedding pictures except for the cards still in the cameras. A good rule of thumb is to backup the files to CDs or DVDs as soon as possible. Avoid reformatting the CF cards until that has been done and verified. After you backup your source files, it’s a good idea to erase all of the images from your CF cards and then reformat them. It simply isn’t enough to delete the images, because extraneous data may remain on the card causing data interference. After reformatting, you’re ready to use the CF card again. Some photographers shoot an entire job on a series of cards and take them back to the studio prior to performing any backup. Others refuse to fill an entire card at any time; instead opting to download, back up, and reformat cards directly during a shoot. This is a question of preference and security. Many photographers who shoot with a team of shooters train their assistants to perform these operations to guarantee the images are safe and in hand before anyone leaves the wedding.
Page 1: WEDDING The Best of PHOTOGRAPHY Amh
Page 4 and 5: INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . .
Page 6 and 7: T his is the third edition of The B
Page 8 and 9: 1. THE EVOLUTION OF WEDDING PHOTOGR
Page 11 and 12: WEDDING PHOTOJOURNALISM: A MODIFIED
Page 13 and 14: things happen spontaneously and use
Page 15: 2. THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER’S MIN
Page 19 and 20: Joe Buissink has been known to work
Page 21 and 22: ABOVE—The photographer must be al
Page 23 and 24: LEFT—Greg Gibson has a finely hon
Page 25 and 26: Michael Schuhmann created this wond
Page 27 and 28: The slower the film speed or digita
Page 29 and 30: of four or five areas of the viewfi
Page 31 and 32: 30 THE BEST OF WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY
Page 33 and 34: ity or file size, it does affect le
Page 35 and 36: From outside the reception, Jerry D
Page 37 and 38: flash. Falloff is less than with ot
Page 39 and 40: 4. CAMERA TECHNIQUE Whether you’v
Page 41 and 42: TOP—J.B. Sallee used a 70mm lens
Page 43 and 44: TOP—With a 17mm lens on his D1X,
Page 45: LEFT—A tricky exposure situation
Page 49 and 50: This is a beautiful pose created by
Page 51 and 52: LEFT—Marcus Bell created this han
Page 53 and 54: Tom Muñoz has a great deal of resp
Page 55 and 56: LEFT—There is something special a
Page 57 and 58: form the pattern. They are used to
Page 59 and 60: Marcus Bell is brilliant at posing
Page 61 and 62: On location, sometimes you can find
Page 63: LEFT—The natural lighting pattern
Page 66 and 67: from the camera lens. It is a drama
Page 68 and 69: ecommended unless your only concern
Page 70: Backlighting with direct sunlight c
Page 73 and 74: TOP—David Worthington created thi
Page 75: ABOVE—Melanie Nashan captured the
Page 79 and 80: Metering and Exposure. Here is how
Page 81 and 82: Al Gordon is a virtuoso of flash fi
Page 83 and 84: the light, you’ll find that it is
Page 85 and 86: BUILD A GOOD RELATIONSHIP Alisha an
Page 87: his best man. Bridesmaids will arri
Page 90 and 91: As part of the wedding photography,
Page 93 and 94: LEFT—Working as a pair or trio of
Page 95 and 96: What couple would not be thrilled w
Page 97 and 98:
LEFT—Joe Photo always makes it a
Page 99 and 100:
10. HELPFUL TIPS The following is a
Page 102 and 103:
THE BOUQUET Make sure a large bouqu
Page 105 and 106:
REMEMBERING NAMES Photographer Fran
Page 107 and 108:
11. PROOFING AND PRINTING T here ar
Page 109 and 110:
ABOVE—Very few truly romantic ima
Page 111 and 112:
Learning to recognize shapes as pag
Page 113 and 114:
Three very simple images and a bold
Page 115 and 116:
album-page layouts in Photoshop. Th
Page 117 and 118:
Dream a Little. With digital, we ha
Page 119 and 120:
David Williams brings sophisticatio
Page 121 and 122:
THE PHOTOGRAPHERS T o illustrate th
Page 123 and 124:
Charles and Jennifer Maring—Charl
Page 125 and 126:
INDEX A Albums, 109-18 design princ
Page 127 and 128:
Also by Bill Hurter . . . OTHER BOO
Page 129:
Joe Buissink Ron Capobianco Anthony
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