Last Saturday I had the pleasure of photographing the union between two amazing souls, Yael and Simon. The weather was perfect, the trees were full of colour and smiles were everywhere. Here is just a taste of some of the images taken on the day, stay tuned for a full blog post in a few weeks.
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to work with the ever talented Robb Duncan of Pixxil Photography at the wedding of Steph and Steve in Sorrento Victoria. The day was perfect, the setting was perfect, overall it was a great day for the ceremony at Sorrento Park followed by a party fuelled reception at the Baths Restaurant which was a lot of fun. Working as a second shooter I was taking images a little different from when I work as the primary photographer, it gives a slightly different perspective and more candid images than the main photographer on the day, which gives you that extra something for your photobook or album. MV Photography offers the service of an additional hired professional photographer to any of the packages in the pricing guide.
I hope you enjoy the images.
Enjoy the rest of the images from Nicole and Billy’s amazing Phillip Island and San Remo Wedding. It was an absolute joy to be with you guys and your very cool bridal party on your special day!
The boys crack the first drink of the day
The rings kept safe in their boxes
The tie goes on
Mum sees her boy all dresses up
The boys all ready to go and looking snazzy
I wonder what Nicole is thinking here?
The girls having a laugh before heading out to the ceremony
Seeing her husband to be for the first time today
Awwwww
The proof!
Coloured paper explosion
The ceremony is done!
The light was nice and soft under the bridge, away from the still high sun
On Saturday March 5th I had the privilege of photographing Nicole & Billy’s wedding on Phillip Island and the reception in San Remo at the exquisite SilverWater Resort. You may remember the first Engagement Session I have ever photographed with them in January. I couldn’t imagine a day with better weather, it was 19 degrees, very lightly clouded with a gentle sea breeze. The day went without a hitch, everything happened on time, there were no wardrobe malfunctions and we had a great afternoon of amazing locations for the photography. Congratulations to Nicole and Billy, Belinda and I wish you all the best for the future. Be sure to keep an eye on the blog and the Facebook page to see more images of this fantastic wedding.
The boys are making sure Billy looks sharp
The girls and mum come see the bride Nicole.
Shoes are on, ready to get married
Billy's mum takes in the moment her son and Nicole get announced as husband and wife
Billy's father had this immensely proud look on his face all day
The Best Man Nathan seems to think he'd be better off a Bridesmaid
An awesome looking crew. I'm saving more bridal party photos for later
I couldn't resist. It would make a great photobook opening spread
Photos under the bridge over to Phillip Island
Just a few of the great locations we shot at during the afternoon
A perfect day for the outdoor ceremony
I had the opportunity recently to second shoot for well known Victorian Wedding Photographer Robb Duncan of Pixxil Photography down in Sorrento. The couple could not have asked for a better day, as the weather was fantastic and enjoyed by all the guests at this relaxed garden wedding in Sorrento Park. Hopefully soon we’ll see some more images of this fantastic wedding which was a pleasure to shoot.
Also coming soon is a ‘How To’ article on a recent Engagement Photo Shoot I did recently, which will show how I tackled some portraits with Off Camera Flash on location.
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I spent last Sunday evening with the awesome Nicole and Billy to photograph their engagement session in St Kilda (where Billy proposed) before their wedding in March this year. We were blessed with, just ok weather, not pouring rain like it has been lately and in other parts of the country (especially Queensland), albeit it was a little windy. What I was happy with though, was the cloudy sky to give me a nice soft light and we then finished off the night with one of the best sunsets I have seen for over two years. This was actually my first E-session ever, so I was very thrilled to do it and we all had a great time.
Stay tuned for the full session in the coming weeks, including a great series of flash lit shots that I’m especially proud of. I would like to thank Nicole and Billy for their time and for being a great couple to direct for shots and also a massive thank you to my assistant (I couldn’t have done this without him), Travis who lugged my lighting case around the busy streets of St Kilda and got me the bits I needed for the shot swiftly and without a complaint. Thanks mate!
It has been a very long time since my last post, I’ve been busy with helping set up my parents business and helping organise my own wedding….. well, watch it being organised. It’s funny when people say ‘You can’t shoot your own wedding, so who is going to do it? Alot of pressure!’ Well I’d like to shoot my own wedding, but I had thought about it, it’s just going to be too difficult, so we have employed the services of an amazing professional studio based in Brunswick West. I’ll no doubt be putting the images into an album I’ll design to show people in person.
Today I wanted to take a look back at an image I took at my last wedding (it feels like a long time ago now), at Bianca and Travis,’ Kangaroo Ground, Victoria. I have posted a black and white version before, but I prefer the colour version shown here.
I always look forward to photographing the rings, it is always a challenge to make each one look different, so it really tests out my vision and creativity. The concept for this shot is simple, but it is a somewhat difficult approach, so for the people reading this for technique advice, this one’s for you.
The rings were held in a small felt container, but I thought for a greater intimacy I had the Best Man hold them in the palm of his hand. The light outdoors was a harsh high noon sun, but we had a slightly shaded garden feature in the park across the road from the house the boys were getting ready at. Through the foilage was filtered sunlight which I used to light the rings to really set them off in the photograph. Having the hand in the lower part of the frame gave me the leading lines from all directions (the fingers, thumb and the jacket), combined with the hot spot of light it gave the rings immediate attention in the composition.
I knew in my head I needed a large aperture to throw the background out of focus, so i had a 50mm f1.4 prime lens mounted on the camera and shot it nearly fully wide open at f1.8. The way I approach all photographs I make is I decide on an aperture setting in my head before I even put the camera up to my eye. With experience you will get to know how your lenses behave at different focal lengths and apertures. By deciding on an aperture first I am making the creative decision to shoot wide open (shallow depth of field/focus) or stopped down to f8 or f11 for maximum depth of focus. I never really go beyond f11 as the sharpness of the lens starts to fall off.
Now focusing at this distance with such a large aperture is notoriously difficult as the depth of field is so narrow, in this case only a couple of centimeters. Even when you change the sensor plane or even move a fraction of an inch during focusing your subject can go out of focus. Combined with the possible movement by the subject’s hands there is massive potential to get an out of focus picture. What I try to do first is set my focus by selecting the nearest focus point (9 points on a Canon 50D and 5D MkII) which I can do while the camera is up to my eye and I lock the focus by holding down your chosen focus lock/shutter button (in my case I use back button focusing using the AE lock button). I then move my head backwards and forwards until I am confident the focus is correct. I sometimes reconfirm focus with the autofocus to be sure I am accurate.
As for metering this shot I used the Spot Meter (2% frame coverage) to pinpoint exposure and I metered off the subject’s skin tone. I know that is the element I want properly exposed and it is close to a midtone to give accurate exposure. I deliberately over exposed a third or two of a stop so I: one, had a good file to work with in post production and two, to deliberately loose detail in the skin.
Processing was simply the Adobe Lightroom recipe I use for most of my wedding photographs, but with selective contrast and sharpening applied to the rings only to make them pop a bit more.
That’s it from me today, but I encourage you to leave a comment which not only feeds my ego it also inspires me to write more about photographic technique.
Hi everyone, it has been a while since my last post, so I thought I tell you all what’s been going on.
MV Photography Pricelist
After much planning and designing the 2010 MV Photography price list has surfaced. Each page has clear photos of either a past wedding or of one the MV Photography printed products that I proudly offer. Newly announced is the new range of photo book products I offer from one of Australia’s premium book manufactures, including a beautiful premium bound book with heavy weight paper, personalised embossing and matching storage case. I will be creating some samples of these in the coming months.
New wedding clients will be treated to this new professionally designed price list either by email request or with a printed copy from an initial client meeting. Also don’t forget you can follow me on Facebook by clicking on the button on top the page. Until next time have a great day.
As promised it is the first post of a series of photo critiques of my own photographs that I have taken at weddings or even just out and about. I aim to get the photography enthusiast side of my readership (or even potential wedding clients) some little insight in what is the photographic process from vision to print. As a photographer I analyse images all the time, where ever I see them, magazines, the Internet, television or ads at bus stops. I look at each photo and try to deconstruct it, the lighting, the equipment and anything else that makes the image, doing this makes me a better photographer and it adds to my own vision.
You will here me harp on about vision all the time, it is the foundation for photography. Most people think it is a matter of point and shoot and better the camera, the better the picture, but before I even raise the camera to my eye I will have some sense of what I’m going to take a picture of and what the final print will look like. I even consider what post image processing I will need to do to bring that photo to match my initial vision.
Here is the first photograph I will look at, it is of good friends of mine Nicole and Tim Holmes, who’s wedding I shot in January this year, this photo is one of my favourite from the day.
Nicole & Tim Holmes Wedding, The Briars Mt Martha, Victoria
I’ll first start with the equipment as that is the most asked question from keen photographers, but the least important. I used a my Canon 400D DSLR (something you can pick up used for under $500) with a vertical battery grip and a Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 zoom lens. This choice of focal length (in this case 17mm on the lens, which is 28mm on the old film scale) was chosen simply due to the distance I was from the subject. I was pushed right up into spider infested grape vines to get the framing I wanted. Most photographers hate the main focus of the subjects to be in the centre of frame, here i was being deliberate. If I tilted the camera down more I would have resulted in an unusual distortion causing the heads to look too big and the bodies taper off to really skinny which is not true to reality and isn’t flattering. If I tried to bend my knees more and get lower I would have been taking the photo from an unflattering position for the bride, but the main reason was to capture that lens flare which I find pleasing. In the past you were always told not to shoot towards the sun or any bright lights in the fear you would get lens flare. I also wanted to have the greenery as a frame for the couple as this gives isolation to the subject and they stand out more.
The image appears relatively natural and I simply captured a fleeting moment, but this was very posed from the start. The groom is quite tall, so he is standing behind the bride on the lower part of the slope (the vineyard was on a slight hill). I had the bride shove in close and connect their bodies for a sense of intimacy and I told them to look at each other. Simply telling them to do this, they must of remembered the reasons they were there that day and both of them broke out in a natural smile. Forced smiles never look the same in a photograph, so I consider this as something that I won’t do at a wedding. The flowers were brought up into frame simply for something for the bride to hold and to add an extra point of interest. I utilised this location in many different ways to result in several pictures to used in the wedding album. This is so I can capture a great range of images if the location is fantastic as well as if any other locations are not great with poor light I have safety images to fall back on.
Metering in this lighting condition is usually quite difficult but I was aware of the problems the camera might face when it came to metering the scene. Due to the massive contrasts between shadows and highlights the camera would go for something in-between, but to make sure my mid tone areas exposed properly I used the centre-weighted (or a.k.a Spot Metering) metering mode and metered off the grooms face. My camera was set to manual mode and already set fairly close to the setting I wanted as I had taken already a few shots prior to this one. While the couple got into position after directing them I took a quick snap shot to make sure the exposure was right. I then quickly reviewed to see what my camera’s histogram was showing to me and then I composed the shot properly. The aperture used was f5.6 which is the sharpest aperture of my lens and I wasn’t too concerned what the depth of field (or depth of focus) was. I simply wanted a sharp image of the couple from top to bottom. The shutter speed I selected was 1/50th of a second which was the minimum I would go to avoid camera shake. Finally the ISO setting, which is the last I usually set was ISO100, so I would get a nice, clean and noise free image. You camera is always going to produce the best files at this setting.
No flash or reflectors were used so the image is totally natural light. Lastly there is the post processing. I keep my processing fairly guarded as this is my own recipe that makes my style, but I will say the white balance is quite warm, there is slight colour toning introduced and there is a vignette applied to darken the edges to make sure the focus of the viewer is on the faces. The images besides the toning is totally straight out of camera and all that was needed to retouch was a few bits of dried flower petals on the suit from earlier in the day and a very low amount of skin smoothing in Adobe Lightroom.
If I was to take it again, I would compose more to the right to get rid of the space to the left, I would try to introduce some space between Nicole’s arm and her body and maybe see if Tim could bend his knees a bit more because he’s as tall as me! There you have it, feel free to comment and ask any questions.
As promised here are the rest of the photos.
Inglewood Estate, Kangaroo Ground. A great place with friendly hosts.
Captured by the other half of the MV Photography duo, just before the guys had to stand up the front of the chapel.
Above: My favourite shot of the day. It summed up the happiness expressed by all on the day.
There you have it, another wedding done. Thank you Bianca and Travis for your business and enjoy your time together as husband and wife.
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