A.S. Aspiring Second Shooter. (will shoot for any FM member for free!)
So I have second shot my first wedding (yay me!), but cannot post it due to the contract. Last weekend was a good friends wedding and I shot the getting ready simply because I was already there (5am, the photographers started at the tea ceremony 4 hours later and were with the bridal party for ~13 hours). Ok ok, I admit I wanted to shoot some
Harsh C&C desired, I am looking for ways to improve. They had quite a few people sleep at their place the night before so the house was a bit messy, was it too forced the way I used the flash to hide that?
I don't mind the mess so much if it reinforces the wedding day's story. These are not romantic portraits, for the most part. So mess or blown out backgrounds... kind of a tossup for me. The 'mess' that definitely bothers me though is the camera sitting on the table in #4, as I presume that's your mess (could be wrong).
2. clone out the guy's face behind the girl. it's an interesting composition, but maybe if you had waited until the make up artist's hand/brush arm were also in the frame?
3. crop tighter to get rid of... looks like a container of pretzels.
4. again crop tighter to get rid of the person on the left.
Mitch W wrote:
I don't mind the mess so much if it reinforces the wedding day's story. These are not romantic portraits, for the most part. So mess or blown out backgrounds... kind of a tossup for me. The 'mess' that definitely bothers me though is the camera sitting on the table in #4, as I presume that's your mess (could be wrong).
Groom's camera, no way I would leave one of mine in frame.
I guess I'm in the minority in that I find the blowing out to be very distracting in all the images. The eye will naturally gravitate to the brightest spot in any image first, which in these images is never the subject. The only one where it sort of works is the second one where the eye must travel to the darkest spot by virtue of the composition. It also seems like the white balance is off -everything is very orange although that could just be my monitor.
TRReichman wrote:
I guess I'm in the minority in that I find the blowing out to be very distracting in all the images. The eye will naturally gravitate to the brightest spot in any image first, which in these images is never the subject. The only one where it sort of works is the second one where the eye must travel to the darkest spot by virtue of the composition. It also seems like the white balance is off -everything is very orange although that could just be my monitor.
- trr
Not your monitor. They had horrendous CCFL lights in the house, and the faces are lit by those lights + a touch of not gelled enough flash that is filling from the light behind them. I like images a bit warm, but this is as close as I could get it without going beyond just the WB sliders in LR.
Mitch W wrote:
Groom shoots with decent gear!
Yea, I used to loan him a spare camera for some events and about 1 year ago he decided to get into the hobby. As a wedding present, the bride got him a 24L.
marti.g3 wrote:
Pretty standard stuff for pre shots. I think they would be a stronger set if the they were BW. Just my opinion.
I 2nd this. I was going to say all of them would work well black and white, except for the last one where the hair/makeup lady is jamming two fingers into the brides ear. I might drop that one.
Yeah, too consistently hot/blown. It’s fine on one or two pictures, but it’s a bit much in every picture posted. I don’t know if you cranked the exposure in some of them (#1 in particular looks hotter than it might otherwise be) but it’s a style best gone to sparingly, IMO.
However, Chuck is right, these show enough promise to hire as a second, or at least get an interview and a portfolio review.
As the primary, I am not concerned about the processing. I only care about the content of the photos. And the content is pretty good in most of the frames.
