The Bride

f/6.3 at 1/60s ISO 200

I just recently did one of the biggest weddings I've done thus far and it was a blast! The bride and groom were very easy to work with and the bride was quite photogenic! Also, I learned one very important aspect to doing wedding photography, you have to be flexible!!!

I had quite a few planned images for the shoot and I got quite a few of them, but there were quite a few images I didn't get that I wanted to. Due to the lack of a wedding planner, this wedding was one of those shoot-from-the-hip style weddings. So, I pretty much had to get, what I could get, when I could get it. It didn't really bother me but I just found it funny that I had all these great shots in my head and couldn't get them executed quite like I wanted. So, I just went with the flow. I still got quite a few really nice shots, and a few unexpected ones that I was really pleased with. I took around 600 photos altogether which, in all honesty, seemed like a rather low amount for this event, but I was pleased with the shots I got, and hope the bride and groom will be too. I still have quite a bit of processing work left, but things are coming along nicely.

I had planned to use off camera flash for the bulk of the portraits, but due to the amount of people hanging around and the general party scene involved, I instead opted to use my Gary Fong Light Sphere Cloud diffuser with my Nikon SB-600 on camera. Surprisingly, most of the shots turned out to my liking, BONUS! That diffuser rules! If you don't have one, get one, I highly recommend it when you're stuck with using your flash on camera.

The shot above was taken with my D300 (in color) with my SB-600 flash on camera and diffused with my Light Sphere diffuser. The flash was manually dialed back to 1/16 power and I shot this one in Aperture Priority mode.

Then in Photoshop, I made an adjustment layer, opened the Channel Mixer to convert to black & white, then simply erased the adjustment on the eyes and only slightly erased it on the flowers for a softer look. This is one of my favorite shots of the day!