Shot of the Day from Lauren and Peter’s Town wedding

Beautiful light makes such a difference!

For me this shot works because of the light, the composition, the limited colour range, the dynamic movement of Lauren and Peter (only partly prompted by me: that cheeky pose of Lauren’s is all Lauren’s!) . . . but most of all because of the light – or did I say that already?

When I went and scouted the venue ahead of time I absolutely knew that I would shoot in this passage and I knew that Lauren and Peter would be happy to shoot in the passage because they wanted something fairly glossy magazine spread. Shooting indoors for a wedding rocks. Especially when you’re blessed with light like this.

The light is beautifully soft light. That softness comes from the big open ‘arches’ to image left. Those ‘arches’ (I know they’re not arches, but I don’t know what else to call them??) are actually looking out over a glass topped atrium. So there’s a whole lot of softening of the light going on. It’s coming in through the glass top without any direct sunlight coming in, it’s bouncing around on the white walls of the atrium and then it’s bouncing back into the passage. There’s so much bouncing going on that Lauren could effectively turn her head away from the light source and still have enough soft even light hit her face to make the image work. The light that’s hitting Lauren’s face is being bouned off the white wall that Peter is leaning against.Add to that that I’ve also got light coming in from the back where there’s a set of windows that stretch from the ground through to the second floor. If it weren’t for those windows then the back of the passage would’ve been miserably dark. And I suppose it could’ve worked, but then it would’ve been a very different shot.

Compositionally I always love receding lines and the implied vanishing point. I love that in this shot those lines are accentuated by the doorways and window frames. And then I love that the figures of Lauren and Peter are playfully dynamic across a fairly rigid, geometric backdrop. Lauren’s roses are at the perfect point with all that light behind them to make them really pop. And they’re also popping because of the othewise limited colour range of whites, creams and blacks.

What’s great for me about this shot is that the interaction between Lauren and Peter is genuine. All I’d asked Peter to do was stand in the doorway with his arm up. All I’d asked Lauren to do was to stand in the ‘archway’ (I know! if you have any idea what they’re called let me know) and extend the hand not holding the flowers. The rest is them and their playfulness and dynamic energy. I love the flirtatiousness of the moment and Lauren’s checky ‘watch it / catch me if you can’ smile.

Here are my shot settings:

Shooting Mode    Manual Exposure
Tv( Shutter Speed )    1/100
Av( Aperture Value )    3.2
Metering Mode    Spot Metering
ISO Speed    500
Lens    EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
Focal Length    62.0mm
Image Quality    RAW
Flash    Off

And then all I did in post was my usual basic adjustments with certain areas masked.

Tags: Shot of the Day