Most photographers would probably declare photos that convey lots of emotion as their favourite photos; photos such as:
or:
but I’m more of a geek, a technical photographer. Although I love getting these shots, the photographs that fill me with the most satisfaction are more the technically pleasing, photos that are far more difficult to take than it would appear.
This great pink sunset for example, wasn’t quite this colourful to the eye, yet with carefully chosen camera settings, and two external flashes lighting the photo, this was the result, pretty much straight from camera, without any trickery done in post-processing.
The same setting at Gosfield Hall, another sunset creating wonderful colours. These shots take a little setting up, I try and do this before I go and fetch the client, so they aren’t waiting for me to get settings dialed in. You have to work quickly when the sky is like this, it can change in only a few minutes!
This is a detail shot I love to take, the rings dropping into the best man’s hands. It looks simple, yet the macro nature of the shot carries with it a few issues: Macro shots have an extremely short depth of field, and the motion of the rings falling requires me to use quite a fast shutter speed. A simple shot, but one requiring practice and experience.
This is a fun shot to take! I use a long exposure, 5 seconds perhaps for this one, as long as 10 seconds for the longer sparkler trails. The bride and groom must stand completely still throughout, so it can take a few takes to get it spot on! And that’s me, running about like a loon, trying to remember how to spell backwards!
Shooting against a lit-up background causes problems – a ten second exposure, even at 100 ISO would way overexpose the building, so I need to stop down to f/11. Then lighting the subject with the remote flashes at the end of the 10 second exposure, while at f/11 (The flash’s impact on the final photo is unaffected by shutter speed) requires three remote flashes all firing at full power! Again, experience, practice the geeky knowledge of the physics of photography are all important!
Fireworks are great, even better when the sky is just not quite dark yet!
This is a shot of my own creation – I actually created my own flash mount, which I lift into position on the bracket of the light over the heads of the bride and groom. The effect is that they are lit by the small lamp, whereas they are actually lit by my two remote flashes, allowing me great control over the final image.
And finally, this is me having a really arty moment! The effect is that of a double-exposure, which can be created in-camera (With a lot of trial and error (Though much easier in post-production!)
A foggy night at Leez Priory! Two of my December weddings at Leez Priory had thick fog! This only added tot he atmosphere (Surely the best venue I know of to have fog actually become an asset!)
