What’s the key to creating great wedding photo’s…?

This was supposed to be an  Ask Your Photographer post, but it didnt really fit in with the others…

I get emails all the time from different people asking all sorts of questions, and one I have received a couple of times lately is “What’s the key to creating great wedding photo’s…?”

This is a broad question and has many variations and of course depending on the depth of the reply, many different answers. Most of the questions of this type have come from people who are just starting out in Photography, or just starting a wedding photography business, and I would have to say just quietly, that if you have to ask a question like that, are you really ready to photograph someones wedding?  I mean seriously…?

As a side note, I currently have the flu, so forgive me if I come across as being a little critical…

Well, anyway, there can be many things that go into creating a great wedding image… But, there are 2 important factors to consider when creating ANY photographic image… they are Exposure and White Balance… Gaining an understanding of them will improve your general photography immediately and should be every new photographers goal.

I wont go into too much detail, because once I get started, I might not stop. But there are a few notes.

1. Exposure

Repeat after me…
There is no substitute for correct exposure.
There is no substitute for correct exposure.
There is no substitute for correct exposure.

Of course a “Correct Exposure” is subjective… It does all depend on what you want your end result to look like… But there is still a common misconception among many “photographers”, that if you make a mistake, you can just fix the errors using software like Photoshop etc… And on the surface, to the in-experienced (or ignorant), that may appear true… but there is no substitute for correct exposure, even if you shoot in RAW file format (although you do have a little more lattitude with RAW files).

And it all has to do with the way in which a Digital Camera captures and processes an image. (But its way outside the scope of this little post). But if you want some more info on this subject, start with the expose to the right tutorial from Luminous landscape, and take it from there.

2. White Balance

The definition of White Balance refers to adjusting the colours (or colour temperature) of an image to make the “neutral tones” appear neutral… ie making your whites white and your greys… well… grey. Now, because of the wide variety of light sources we are likely to encounter in a typical wedding day, we can end up with a wide variety of colour casts in our images. Typically, there are 3 ways of dealing with it…

The most logical (and the most sucessful if you shoot jpeg images) is to adjust your white ballance as you shoot, getting it right “in camera” and then changing settings as the lighting changes. It takes some practice to do quickly and accurately, but is not hard once you learn how.

Then there is the “Adjust afterwards” method, very simple if you shoot in RAW, not so simple if you shoot jpeg. I shoot RAW and while I always try to get it close in camera, I have the ability to accurately set my White Balance once I have the images in software… In fact, I can adjust it more accurately than the camera is capable of achieving.

The third method is the “ignorance” method…  Ignore it altogether and its dealt with… And you would be unpleasantly surprised at how many so called “photographers” are using method 3.

So, there you have it, please feel free to comment.