A couple favorites | Wedding Photos | Photo Forum

I’ve been shooting weddings for my company and another studio lately and have been pretty swamped, which is good since it was my goal for the year. Here are a couple of the images I hate the least that I’ve done over the past couple weeks. From different weddings obviously.

I don’t have the settings off hand but most of it is just exposing for the highlights you want.

The one with the blurred groomsmen, they wanted a city themed album so I slowed my shutter way down to about 1/30 or so, shot 4.0 (wide open for the lens I had) and adjusted my ISO for the exposure I wanted. Positioned the bride and groom to make it look like they are walking and had the groomsmen quickly walk by.

The hill shot, I just exposed for the sky and used a flash to hit the couple.

The reception, I slow my shutter way down, usually around .3 to .5, I keep my f stop around 8.0 (I’ll explain why).  I use a flash, usually around 1/8 power at 105mm bounced 90 to 45 degrees from my angle, not the flash head setting, into the ceiling and set to 2nd curtain sync. I keep my fstop at 8.0 since I almost never use the viewfinder at the party part of the reception and like to hold my camera over my head. 8.0 gives me room to miss my focus point and allows more of what is going on to be in focus. I use AF but the flash on my camera emits a red grid as an af assist and I use that to line up my shots. 

The other 2 are just standard stuff, pick your exposure and get the shot. I keep it basic for exposure, my fstop is never adjusted for exposure, only for depth of field. My shutter speed almost never goes below 1/125 so I get some exposure wiggle room. ISO is my main adjustment for exposure. Modern cameras, especially full frame canon are so damn good at very high ISO I don’t feel a need to sacrifice depth of field or risk motion blur to get the exposure I want. My exception to this is when using flash, I do use my shutter to adjust for ambient exposure but then I adjust my flash output and spread for how intense I want it the flash to be.