Wedding Photography | Photocrati

What metering mode to use when photographing a wedding

Chris Christoff — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:50:09 +0000

Trying to decide which metering mode to use when photographing a wedding is a bit of a pain. It doesn’t help that there are four different modes to choose from, each with an icon that you need a Rosetta Stone to decipher. Last night I took some photographs that will hopefully shed a little light on the modes I use most: Evaluative (Matrix) and Center Weighted Average.

Evaluative meter mode is the most sophisticated meter mode in the camera. The meter reads the entire scene and then, get this, tries to figure out what you’re taking a picture of. The software has thousands of sample readings from different scenarios in its memory. It compares the readings from your image against the database. So, if the software “sees” all dark on the bottom and all light on the top it thinks, “Must be a landscape!” and alters the exposure a little. Dark in the middle and light all around the outside “Portrait!” Adjust, adjust, adjust …

Here’s another cool thing about Evaluative metering: It’s the only mode that takes into account what the camera is actually focusing on. The meter reads the entire scene but pays special attention to the focus points when determining exposure. This is way cool. If you are taking a portrait and you put the focusing point on the subjects face, the camera will give added consideration to the face when determining exposure. Perfect!

However (like you didn’t see this coming), both of these really cool features can work against you when shooting a wedding. First, the camera doesn’t always guess correctly when trying to figure out what you are taking a picture of, which could translate to a bad exposure. Second, I use selective focus all the time. I almost never allow the camera to select it’s own focus points. When shooting at f2.8, I can’t take a chance that the camera might decide to focus on something in front of or behind the subject. I just don’t have enough depth-of-field to play with. So, I select the focus point myself and put it right on the target. But which target? All white bride (dress) or all black groom (tux)? Remember, the focus point will affect the exposure.

Here are some test shots to illustrate what I mean:

I used f2.8 for all of these images. I let the camera select the proper shutter speed based on its internal meter. I also used selective focus in all of the images, and I placed the focus point in the center of the card. No Fancy Nancy dolls were harmed in the making of this film.

In the Center Weighted shot with the white card, the camera selected 1/40 of a second. For the picture with the black card it selected 1/30th of a second. Now, that card is not a big part of the picture and doesn’t necessarily constitute a change in exposure, but 1/3 of a stop is not huge. You’ve got to look pretty close to notice that the picture on the right is brighter than the one on the left.

Now, look at the Evaluative images. For the black card it picked 1/30 of a second, same as with the Center Weighted shot. But, for the white card it picked 1/60 of a second. That’s a full stop of light difference. Twice as much light! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! Because the focus point moved from all-black to all-white, the exposure was changed three times as much the Center Weighted shots. In fact, it dropped the exposure so much that the white card looks neutral grey, the same color my bride’s dress would have looked had I been focusing on her.

Now, imagine you are shooting the cake cutting. You’re close in to the bride and groom at f2.8, and you slap that focus point to the side to focus on the groom, SNAP! Then you move (or the groom does) and you lose the spot so you slap the focus point to the other side and SNAP! You now have two pictures taken from the same angle ot the same subjects that are a full stop apart in light. However, in Center Weighted mode the focus points would have been ignored, and since the components of the scene didn’t change the exposure wouldn’t either.

Note: When shooting the above scene, my camera would be in Manual mode, and so the camera would not be changing the exposure. However, the ETTL II system in the flash would be varying the flash power based on the meter which would result in the same change in exposure (ie: more flash when focused on the tux and less when focused on the dress).

So, that’s why I don’t use Evaluative mode at a wedding. It’s great everywhere else and I use it for everyday shooting all the time. Being able to “weight” the meter towards whatever you are focusing on is great in most situations. But when I’m shooting two people, one in white and the other in black, I need a mode that isn’t as affected by where I put the focus point.

Best of Wedding Photography

Chris Christoff — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:47:23 +0000

Quite a bit late now, we’re happy to announce the launch of best of wedding photography. This is a new, invitation-only membership site for top wedding photographers. It was launched in February, and is now in the midst of its second-ever round of invitations. The project is something of a joint-venture between Photocrati (Erick and our great team of photographers, designers, coders, and SEO professionals) and some of the world’s best known wedding photographers, including David Beckstead, Ben Chrisman, Del Sol Photography (Matt Adcock and Sol Tamargo), Glen Johnson, Anna Kuperberg, Crash Taylor, and David Ziser. It’s an exciting project.

You can visit the site here: www.bestofweddingphotography.com. Or if you want to see who’s listed in your area, go ahead and jump straight to the location below.

Congratulations to all those photographers who were invited on after a rigorous review process during the first and second-ever rounds of invitations!

- Quimper Wedding Photographers

- Yorkshire Wedding Photographers

Wedding album design

Chris Christoff — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:04:14 +0000

This may sound strange, but designing a wedding album can be more stressful than actually taking the pictures. When you’re shooting a wedding, you try all sorts of different techniques to get the shot. That way you have a lot of options available to you later when designing the album. However, when designing the album, you don’t have the luxury of “covering your bases,” so to speak. You have to take 700 images and eliminate down to 60-100. There are a lot of criteria to meet:

Do these images tell the story of the day?
Do you have all the formal and family shots that the client wants?
Does this client like big pictures or lots of small ones?
What’s more important to the client: beautiful formal pictures or candid fun ones?

Those are just a few of the questions that you have to think about as you begin the design and we haven’t even touched on the whole artistic side yet. There are certainly times when I am more nervous showing off an album design than I am showing off the pictures. With an album you are saying, “This is how they should be displayed. This is the way your wedding story should be told.” You don’t want to get it wrong.

There are some photographers that don’t let the client have any input into the album design but I’m not one of them. I am better than the client when it comes to designing a book that flows and beautifully showcases the wedding but I cannot compete with the client’s ability to select the images that will mean the most to them over the years. So, I design the album myself, then allow the client to make changes. It’s a back-and-forth process that varies by client (some want a lot of changes, some don’t want any).

There are times when I will design a beautiful page only to have the client suggest changes that destroy it. It’s a legitimate concern because the client will show your album to friends and it will be a representation of your work, even though it’s been altered. But I believe that a client who has a hand in the design feels more connected to the work, and is more likely to show it off and brag about how great the photographer was and how understanding he was, etc. This will ultimately get you more clients than a beautiful album that the bride had no part in making.

I don’t ever want a bride, while showing her album, to say, “I’m not real fond of this picture,” or, “It would have been nice if these pictures were bigger.”

I also think clients love the albums more because they are involved in the process. I do know this: the more demanding and exacting the bride is when designing the album, the more likely she is to order more than one. It’s very common for a bride to order one album and, after it’s finally finished, order a second album as a gift.

I design my albums in Fotofusion. I don’t use templates at all. I start with a blank page and drag the best pictures on to it … then figure out the best way to arrange them and still showcase the ones I feel are most important.

This post would be far too long if I tried to explain everything that goes into an album design so instead I’m going to talk about one of the things that I think really makes a difference: Backgrounds.

Let me start off by saying that I love a single, double-page print. For me, the best part of building flush-mount panoranic albums is turning the page to discover this huge 12×24 print staring back at you. This is especially useful with big groups because it allows you to see the faces. When clients turn to a page like this, it always gets a reaction and for many justifies the cost. Of course, it’s the easiest page to design. There’s no background on this page and I don’t frame it in any way. I like the image to fill all the space.

It would be great if there was some perfect combination of pages for every wedding (1 page of getting ready + 2 pages of the ceremony + 2 pages of formals…) but it just doesn’t work out that way.

Instead you have to look at the images and decide what’s important (and what you have great images of…). The above page was taken at the reception because I noticed the wallpaper and thought it would make for some dynamic shots. I started with the bride and then a few bridesmaids hopped in and the next thing you know we are posing and shooting and having a good time. Once I started the album design these images just demanded a page of their own so I had to adjust my other pages to make room. You’ll notice that I matched the background of the page to the color of the carpet. I try to color match whenever I can, or even better, use an image. Matching the color really makes this page stand out as it’s own “event” in the book.

This is a good example of how I like to use an image for the background on a page. (The exception to this sort of design is the family formals page which I usually design with a black background. They look more formal that way.) By using the background image I’m able to showcase the reception’s theme (the groom is a casino dealer) without putting it front and center. People spend a lot of time and money on the reception planning, so I always try to incorporate it into the album as much as possible.

Finally, there’s this image which is the final page in a recent album. By using the image as it’s own background I’m able to extend the view … making this picture appear to be a wider angle than it actually is. I use this effect a lot on the final page. I like the “going away” feel that signals the end of the day.

As always, I make no claims that my way is the best way… just my way.

Depth of field and light at a Wedding or Bar Mitzvah

Chris Christoff — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:29:25 +0000

Many wedding and Bar Mitzvah photographers find themselves in a bit of a pickle when they are first starting out. You’ve looked at hundreds of websites and seen all these incredible, artistic wedding pictures and decided “I want to do that.” So, you buy all the equipment, flashes and fast lenses that you can afford and set out to create beautiful, moving images. You spend all this time and energy in pursuit of the artistic and then suddenly discover that you can’t shoot the mundane … and let me tell you, there is a lot of mundane to shoot at a 7-hour wedding.

It’s not our fault that we don’t always learn how to take these shots. They aren’t the sort of shots that get featured on the web or in the pages of a magazine. It’s great to see those beautiful shots of an outdoor wedding and the incredible formals but what about the other 500 pictures the photographer took? You know, the ones in the dark hall with the dancing people? You don’t see many of those on the ol’ website because they aren’t quite as dynamic. Still, being able to take a good table shot or dancing shot is every bit as important as the perfectly lit formal. For some clients it may be more important, depending on who is sitting at the table or dancing on the floor.

My first rule of photography is this: Get the shot. First, learn how to get the shot, any shot, in any situation. Then, learn how to get it in an artistic and creative way (if needed). Don’t spend so much time learning the “hard” shots that you neglect to learn the “easy” ones. You may find that the “easy” ones aren’t so easy after all.

Let’s take a look at some pictures from a recent Bat Mitzvah that I photographed in Tampa. I’ll start with a “hard” one:

This picture was taken in about three minutes. We had just finished all the family shots and the party was about to start. I asked for a few minutes to shoot the client alone and this was the result. Now, it’s true that a shot like this can require a lot of learning. I’m using a strobe mounted on a tripod with a shoot-thru umbrella. I’ve balanced my shutter speed and f-stop so that I get the background I want (mostly dark but not pitch black) and can still hand-hold my camera without fear of shake. I can quickly figure out the correct flash exposure because I have practiced it a hundred times. As a photographer, I’m proud of my ability to be able to take a picture like this on location fast. It takes work to be able to do it right (and quickly) and it’s obvious that it’s done by a pro. Uncle Bob did not take this shot. (Still, there are a few things I would fix if I had more time…)

Now, here’s a picture that’s not so obvious:

In many ways it’s just a snapshot and it doesn’t necessarily stand out as a “pro” shot. But it’s still important and sooo easy to screw up. The “hard” pictures are great but you can’t fill a 32-page album with them. You need a lot more. These shots are the bread-and-butter of the album (which makes the fancy shots the icing-on-the-cake?) Here’s how I shot the picture above:

My first consideration is light. How much do I have, how much do I need. I’ve written before about my tendency to use a second strobe on a tripod to get more dance floor light and that’s what I did here. I have a Canon 580EX mounted on a tripod to my right, pointed at the ceiling at 1/4 power with a full CTO gel. I have a 580EXII on-camera on ETTL with a gel as well. The on-camera strobe is usually pointed behind me so it acts mostly as fill. Now I have enough light and I quickly test it at the start of the event. f4.5 @1/200 ISO 1600. I’m using a lens that goes to f2.8 but I am paranoid about depth-of-field so if I can shoot a little higher, I will (more on that later).

A word about shutter speed: It’s possible to stop action at very slow speeds by “freezing” the action with the flash. The problem with this technique is that you are usually shooting at a slow speed so that you can get background light into the shot and if you are getting that light, it’s usually just enough to create blur or “ghosting.” “Dragging the shutter” with dancing people can be a disaster and many times you won’t notice the ghosting until you get home.

My second consideration is blur and it comes in two flavors: movement and depth-of-field (DOF). The movement part is taken care of because I have enough light to shoot at 1/200. Here’s how I tackle DOF:

Shoot far and wide.

DOF is affected by 3 things: aperture, focal length and distance to subject. If you can shoot far and wide you will be in DOF heaven. So, for this shot I am shooting a moving subject, in a field of people so I want to get as much DOf as I can. Here’s the original picture:

Now you can see the shadow created by my off-camera flash on the back wall. The beauty of the giant megapixel camera is that we can shoot so much wider and crop later. The best part is that the wider we shoot, the greater the DOF … which means we can crop closer and still have good focus. Cropping doesn’t scare me because no one will be buying a 20×24 print of this picture. It will probably be smaller than a 4×6 by the time it gets put into the album. Cropping also eliminates the shadow on the wall. If I had used direct, on-camera flash the shadow would be behind her and impossible to remove.

Let me be clear that I’m not claiming that the “easy” picture on this page is an award winner. My point is that you can’t make every picture an award-winning shot and you shouldn’t try to. Wedding and Bat Mitzvah clients want those incredible images but they also want a lot of pictures of the party … and they want those pictures to be well-lit and in-focus. People will spend more time looking at the album page that contains twelve good shots of friends and family at the party than they will the page that has one incredibly lit, stand-alone picture. The perfect-pose, perfectly-lit picture is art but the great party picture is life.

The trick is to learn what you can do given the circumstances of your surroundings. All of your party pictures don’t have to have huge DOF. Get creative with tight-focus and shallow DOF all you want but at the same time, be able to get enough light on the subject and everything in focus if needed.

Taking pictures of the cake, the dress and the rings at a wedding

Chris Christoff — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:59:03 +0000

One of the things that makes Wedding Photography such a challenge is that you have to be able to wear so many hats. When I shoot a portrait session I have to be able to light and shoot a portrait session with a model (following directions) and retouch the images.

When I shoot a wedding, I have to be able to do the same thing as a portrait shoot … as well as shoot in low-light in the church and at the reception, shoot action in low-light, shoot as a photojournalist and capture events that tell a story, shoot products, retouch everything and design an album that showcases the day. It’s a lot of hats.

What’s funny to me is how much of a kick I get out of “product” shots at a wedding. Don’t get me wrong, I love every element and get giddy as a schoolgirl when I pull off an amazing shot, but I never thought I would enjoy the “product” shots as much as I do. “Product” shots are what I call the static shots of rings, flowers, tables, rooms, cakes, etc. that you have to take in order to capture everything about the day … the little details that people will be glad they have a picture of in years to come.

I can say with all sincerity that I would never want to be a catalog photographer. It would bore me to tears, I think. But I also think that I might understand the fellow photogs who do that work after seeing how excited I can get over a picture of a cake.

The trick is to approach the shot like it’s the most important one of the day. That way you really get a kick out of nailing it.

This particular cake was in a hall that was completely white. White ceiling, white walls, white, white, white. However, there was one spot in the whole place with color and it happened to be right behind the cake. There were also some fake trees back there.

I shot this handheld with on-camera flash pointed off to my left. It really didn’t take much work at all but I just love it. I moved the trees a few times to see how I liked it but eventually ended up using the very first shot. Cake shots are probably the easiest of the “product” shots at a wedding.

This is from the same wedding. I was sliding past the candy table looking for a little pick-me-up when I noticed a big jar of Hershey’s kisses. “Hey,” I thought, “Maybe I can use those for the ring shot!”

So, I grabbed an empty jar and a few handfuls of kisses and went to work. At first I tried putting the rings in the jar with the kisses but they were just getting lost. Then I realized that the table cloth was chocolate colored so I just dumped the kisses on the table and positioned the rings.

My camera was on a tripod so that I could shoot very steady and long for better ambient light (these shots are sometimes the only time I use a tripod the entire day; but they are worth it, I think).

The wedding favor at this wedding was a dog tag with the wedding date stamped on it. I had the rings and was setting them up on the table where the cake was sitting and just couldn’t find enough props to make the picture. (Typically, the cake table is a good place to start because the table is usually decorated with candles and flowers, etc that I can use for the shot.) So, I started looking around and spotted the dog tags.

I placed the rings on a rose petal, positioned a glass with floating candle to give me some filler and held the dog tags in my hand. The room was very dark so I knew that the movement of the tags wouldn’t be blurred because the flash would freeze the movement. The camera was on a tripod. The couple loves this picture, and I do too except for what is (to me) a huge mistake which I’m sure you have already spotted: You can’t read the dog tags. My only defense is that it was so dark I couldn’t read them when I was taking the shot!

This is a good example of how a product shot can end up being very special to the client. This particular client ordered a framed collage of five pictures and this is one of the five … chosen from the 700+ images that I took.

This may come as a surprise to you but WOMEN LOVE SHOES! What? You knew that? Oh, sorry.

The dress picture is often the hardest one I’ll take all day. Sad but true. It’s not always easy to find someplace beautiful to showcase a dress that is 200 feet long and weighs as much as a wild boar. When I find myself in a less than ideal place for the dress picture I will instead focus on something else and use the dress for background. You can’t go wrong focusing on shoes and jewelry.

This shot was taken hand-held. I exposed for the dress using natural light from the door to my left. Then I shot a few with my flash on at -2, bounced off the wall behind me as fill light. When I shoot something like this, I throw a dozen different settings at it. The great thing about inanimate objects is they don’t care how many pictures you take, so take a lot. Try different settings and point your flash different directions. You might get something you weren’t expecting. It wasn’t until I was retouching this photo that I thought to convert it to black and white. I think the black and white gives it an old “Hollywood” feel but maybe that’s just me.

The bottom line is this: Every picture you take can be special if you but some thought into it. You know that picture that you always see of the wedding couple with their hands on the bouquet, showing off their rings? I have never taken that picture. There are plenty of shots at a wedding that are considered “must-have” and I take my share. But when it comes to the rings, I think I can do something better, or at least more unique. You’ll be surprised to discover that other people will love something if you love it too (and it shows in your work).

Wedding Photography and Bounce Flash

Chris Christoff — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:44:30 +0000

I’ve been trying to write about bounce flash at weddings for about an hour now. The problem with explaining bounce flash is that it seems simple at first (just point the flash over your shoulder!) but then there’s a snag … a situation where that doesn’t quite work. So, you talk about the snag, which leads you down another path (diffusers and bounce cards!) … which veers off into some other tangent (shadows and background!) and the next thing you know you’re typing the words “raccoon” and “inverse square law” in the same sentence and you just have to stop.

So, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to post some pictures from a recent wedding and talk about the lighting in each one. Hopefully I will be able to stay on topic. (By the way, I am a wedding photographer in Tampa, FL and no raccoons were harmed in the writing of this article.)

This particular wedding reception was in a small room with low ceilings that were white (mana from heaven for a bounce flash photographer). I was able to shoot with my flash pointed back over my left shoulder most of the night. I think a lot of people tend to believe that you either bounce off a wall or you bounce off the ceiling in front of you. It’s important to realize that you can bounce off the ceiling behind you as well (especially if it’s low). You will typically lose some light, since most of it will bounce to the back of the room but you’ll still get some back from the ceiling, tablecloths, walls, etc. I had my flash dialed up to +1 most of the night. Could I have taken this shot with a diffuser or direct flash? Sure, but I would have lost contrast in the subject. The reason the dancing man stands out is because the light falls off across his body (notice the shadow on his face).

I should point out that my first choice for flash photography is always a direct bounce of some sort. If I can’t pull that off I will use a bounce card and try to bounce off the ceiling with the card throwing some light forward to eliminate “raccoon eyes” (and you thought I was joking about the raccoons). If the ceiling is too high for a good bounce I will consider using a second strobe on a stand pointed at the ceiling to get more light (read this). If none of these options work, I light a chair on fire and escape in the confusion.

When I’m not using a card I point the flash over my left shoulder. When I’m using a card I point the flash to the left or right. This gives me a nice bounce for cross-lighting and the card reflects enough light for fill. (That’s my 5-year-old daughter demonstrating my typical bounce card setup.) Many times when you are shooting with a deep background (like a dance floor), you can stay in this configuration most of the night. It has the distinct advantage of working the same way when you tilt the camera, which is great for fast-paced dance floor pictures. However, if you are shooting against a wall, you will get more shadow, like the picture below:

When I approached the best man during his toast, my first thought was, “The wall behind me is too far away.” So, I switched to my fall back position with a bounce card. I shot and chimped (ooh-ooh!) and immediately spotted the deep shadow on the wall. It’s still an acceptable picture and I was getting some contrast on his face but I wanted to do better. So, I dropped the card and rotated the flash to point behind me at 45 degrees just to see if I could get enough bounce:

Bingo! Good contrast and almost no shadow. Now I knew that I could bounce off the ceiling behind me from anywhere in the room. I never used the bounce card again that night.

Once you start to bounce flash at weddings you will find yourself looking for ways to be more creative:

For this picture I pointed the flash straight left and bounced it off the wall.

This brings up an interesting point: Don’t let yourself fall into the trap of thinking that you need a beautiful venue to get good pictures. Every wedding isn’t at The Ritz-Carlton. You never know what elements of a wedding will be most important to your bride and groom, but you can be sure that they hired you because they expect you to produce something unique with whatever they provide. Work the room, look for angles and find the shot. (btw, I’m undecided about whether or not to clean up the colored lights on Mom’s dress. I’ll probably clean it up for the album)

Remember, it’s not just about the fancy formals with off-camera lighting or the emotional close-ups during the ceremony. The #1 request that I get from clients when designing their album is, “more party pictures.” With a little creative bounce flash you can elevate your reception pictures to a new level.