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I have been asked to photograph my niece's wedding later in the year - the first for me. I decided that I should practise some portrait photography. So on Sunday I arranged with my brother-in-law and his girlfriend to stroll thru the botanical gardens for a while....

What I had hoped would be a good experience has turned out to be a bit of a reality check for me I think. I took about 100 photos. Only 4 of them are OK. I knew I had a lot to learn, but I didn't think my shots would be this bad

I really struggled getting nice compositions/poses and nice exposures. So many variables to control....

What I was aiming for was nice shallow depth of field to give a blurry background with a bit of fill flash on the couple...

Here are my best ones....

75-300 f4.5-5.6 (@f.4.5, 80mm, A mode, SB600 with PJ direct)


50mm f1.8 MF


50mm f1.8 MF, manual exposure with SB600 + PJ direct


Kit lens @60mm f4.5, A mode, SB600 with PJ bounce


Any words of wisdom would be appreciated....

Cheers
Gecko

Hi Gecko. The first image is the best one in my opinion. Nice composition and posing. Maybe their faces could be lit up a bit more though.

Keep practicing, you'll get the hang of it.

you can add a bit more bounce to these images by using levels or curves...... nice shots....... but bit hard to comment and help on the bad ones without seeing them........

I like the poses in the shots but as bigpix said they need a curves and levels twiddle which will make these shots pop . They all look too dark .
Check out the Fred Miranda weddings forum .You'll find some great shooting ideas in there from people shooting weddings day in and day out .

Hi Bigpix

I'll get some of the bad ones out and post them.
Hmmm so many to choose from....

Must go looking for a curves tutorial....

Gecko

gecko wrote:Hi Bigpix

I'll get some of the bad ones out and post them.
Hmmm so many to choose from....

Must go looking for a curves tutorial....

Gecko

Gecko - don't be too hard on yourself, you will find that once you play around with your curves a little you'll improve in no time. Whilst a curves tutorial would be beneficial, nothing beats experimenting yourself and seeing what works and what doesn't.

gecko wrote:Hi Bigpix

I'll get some of the bad ones out and post them.
Hmmm so many to choose from....

Must go looking for a curves tutorial....

Gecko

or start with levels......... mid tone slider first (the middle one] move a little to the right and your image will get darker and more contrasty, this is OK, move the white point [the far right one] to the left a little, and your image has a lot more punch and shoud be a lot brighter........ the slider on the far left will add solid black, you do not need to play with this with these style of images......... play with different amount of movement of the mid tone and white point in RGB ........ if your trees or green colour is down play with single channels with the same 2 sliders

from a look perspective i like th elast but 1 probably is most natural

they do seem stiff you have to break them down
what works well with couples is to get them to reminice about something like first date, get them talking about themselves people love talking about themselmes and being nostalgic about pleasant memories from the past
once they are laughing and havign a good all time snap the crap out them
and get their attention it's this moment where they are natural and they will have eye contact with the lens

straight direction of any model/subject often looks contrived and forced
work the model/subject

Here's my first attempt at curves
This is using nikon capture editor
I was away doing this when you made your post Berine, so I will give your method a try in a sec...

Curves were applied to a JPEG...

or start with levels......... mid tone slider first (the middle one] move a little to the right and your image will get darker and more contrasty, this is OK, move the white point [the far right one] to the left a little, and your image has a lot more punch and shoud be a lot brighter........ the slider on the far left will add solid black, you do not need to play with this with these style of images.........

Thanks Bernie, your method is faster than mine. I just dragged the curve around until I got something that looked OK - certainly makes the original look pretty flat....

Here's a curves tutorial....

http://www.thegoldenmean.com/technique/curves1.html

they do seem stiff you have to break them down
what works well with couples is to get them to reminice about something like first date, get them talking about themselves people love talking about themselmes and being nostalgic about pleasant memories from the past
once they are laughing and havign a good all time snap the crap out them
and get their attention it's this moment where they are natural and they will have eye contact with the lens

Thanks for the good advice.
In hindsight, I think I was too busy thinking about my camera/settings etc etc and not engaging enough with the people I was shooting. Getting them talking... happy, distracted...snap = nice candid. Thanks.

Cheers
Gecko

That looks 100% better already .