The Best of Wedding Photography.pdf - Free

Backlighting with direct sunlight can create a
beautiful edge highlight as was done here. Becker
photographed this beautiful and intense young
flower girl readying herself for her job. The background
of the red bridesmaids’ dresses makes this
shot even more festive. Becker used a Fuji Finepix
S2 Pro and 80–200mm f/2.8 lens set to 145mm.
The ISO was set to 160 and the exposure was 1/350
second at f/4.
bright background and highlights instead
of the exposure on the face. If you expose
for the background light intensity, you will
silhouette the subject. As usual, it is best to
use the handheld incident meter in these
situations. Shield the meter from any backlight,
so you are only reading the light on
the faces. Alternatively, take a test exposure
and verify on the camera’s LCD if the
backlight underexposes the frame. If so,
move to manual exposure mode and adjust
the settings appropriately.
If the sun is low in the sky, you can use
cross lighting to get good modeling on
your subjects. You must be careful to position
the subjects so that the sun’s side
lighting does not hollow out the eye sockets
on the highlight sides of their faces.
Subtle repositioning will usually correct
this. You’ll need to use fill light on the
shadow side to preserve detail. Try to keep
your fill-flash output about 1/2 to one stop
less than your daylight exposure.
Images made in bright sunlight are unusually
contrasty. To lessen that contrast,
try using telephoto lenses, which have less inherent contrast
than shorter lenses. If shooting digitally, you can adjust
your contrast preset to a low setting or shoot in RAW
mode, where you can fully control image contrast postcapture.
Open Shade. Open shade is light reflected from the
sky on overcast days. It is different than shade created by
direct sunlight being blocked by obstructions, such as trees
or buildings. Open shade can be particularly harsh, especially
at midday when the sun is directly overhead. In this
situation, open shade takes on the same characteristics as
overhead sunlight, creating deep shadows in the eye sockets
and under the noses and chins of the subjects.
Open shade can, however, be tamed and made useful
by finding an overhang, like tree branches or a porch,
which blocks the overhead light, but allows soft shade light
to filter in from the sides, producing direction and contouring
on the subject. This cancels out the overhead nature
of the light and produces excellent modeling on the
faces.
If forced by circumstance to shoot your subjects out in
unobstructed open shade, you must fill in the shade with
a frontal flash or reflector. If shooting the bride or the
bride and groom, a reflector held close to and beneath
your subjects should suffice for filling in the shadows created
by open shade. If photographing more than two peo-
OUTDOOR AND MIXED LIGHTING 69