Well, here it is, our 5th and final wedding of the year... boy its been a roller coaster. So much fun and so many things learned. I can't wait to embark on next years adventures. Our goal for this first year of business was 5... we hit that. Our goal for 2010 was 10, but at this point we've already got 9 booked and 3-4 more solid prospects (extremely solid). Obviously, the 2010 goal is being re-evaluated.
We had a ton of fun shooting this wedding. The girls all looked amazing and the guys were just killing it in their zoot suits. I was hoping we'd get some better weather, but it was a typically dreary, rainy, November day in NJ.
iShoot wrote:
what is the green dots in some of the pics?
Yes... the annoying green dots are indeed from the dj and they really bother me. Early on in the evening he asked me if I wanted any of the lights turned off. At the time, he didn't have these laser lights on, just the standard dj wash mood lights. At random points through the night, he'd turn this laser light show on... I dind't realize how strong they were, they were relatively non-existent on the LCD.
I really like the angle on 7 Richard! It looks like it suffers a bit from your flash overpowering the top of the frame though. Maybe with some masking you could blend the lighting a bit more between the two halves to not make it as noticeable. 12's montage is a cute idea. Love the hat tipping. I cannot believe the lights the dj had, I think I would have been tempted to kill him/her lol. Tiny green and red spots alllllll over every photo, wow glad I haven't run into that here. Nightmare!
RichardLavigne wrote:
p150 and ziffi3... i'm interested in why the dress shots seem lifeless. what do you mean by this? what can I do to better them?
Dress shot #1 - There are no interesting angles in the room to add to the composition. We aren't looking at the dress from an interesting perspective. There is no interesting lighting applied. The dress has no flow or sense of motion. You can see the whole room, which isn't adding any interesting context.
Basically, it's just a straight-on, flat-lit, shot of a dress that's just hanging there like a sad sack.... and it's cut off at the bottom, meaning you favored getting more of that ugly light fixture in there instead of the whole dress.
Dress shot #2 - Pretty much the same as the other, but closer.
I really don't mean for this to come off as harsh. The venue looks like a hotel, so I'm sure your options were limited. But don't let that be an excuse! Don't settle for taking an "insurance documentation" type of shot.
Possible options for improving:
- Use off-cam light to spotlight the dress from a dramatic angle. This would give interesting depth and shadow to the dress as well as darken the rest of the room comparatively.
- Get under the dress and shoot upward, or over it shooting down, or pick a unique detail and focus on that. Something that draws the viewer in and makes them want to take notice.
- Use existing structures like wall molding, windows, doors, columns, or whatever to have the dress as part of a whole composition instead of just taking a shot of the dress (Evan Baines has a sweet shot of a dress on a coat hook next to regular coats and umbrellas and such).
