Shot of the Day from Heidi Louw

A guest post from Heidi Louw:

I was very fortunate to assist Roberta at Linton and Lyzelle’s wedding, held at Suikerbossie. An advantage of assisting of course is, that you are free to move around in the background during the shoot; and unobtrusively capture moments on camera.

What makes this my favourite shot of the day, besides the intimate moment shared between the couple, is the sense of space I get. It makes it very dramatic and places emphasis on the couple.

We were standing quite far back and I used a Nikkor F2.8 24-70mm wide angle lens. I framed this shot with the road 1/3 into the bottom of my picture and evenly spaced the bushes to the left and right to create a symmetrical  ’frame’ around Linton & Lyzelle. I then decided to place them at roughly 1/3 from the side on the left, to create a strong point of interest (as they are roughly 1/3 from the bottom as well). With a teeny bit of post editing in Photoshop (burning the sides and bottom, with a slight vignette and turning the image into b&w) I managed to place even more emphasis on the couple intentionally; that they are the first thing you’ll see when you look at this picture.

Here are my shot settings:

Shooting Mode    Manual Exposure
Tv( Shutter Speed )    1/4000
Av( Aperture Value )    2.8
Metering Mode    Matrix
ISO Speed    400
Lens    Nikkor24-70mm f/2.8L
Focal Length    60.0mm
Image Quality    RAW
Flash    Off

Tags: Heidi Louw, Photoshop tips, Rule of Thirds, Shot of the Day