White on Black.

I’d like to return to yesterday’s Wedding post. But no more wedding-talk, this time I’m going to ramble on about something I know you love: Photography.

Of course I didn’t go to a wedding without my trusty Canon. After I tagged along as the bag carrying assistant on a wedding photo session a few weeks ago, I learned the importance of using a flash when shooting in bright sunlight. It can eliminate those sharp shadows that tend to turn up in people’s faces. So this time I attached my Sigma flash and used the EFS 17-85mm exclusively. I wanted to use the tiny 50mm as well, but there were too many people moving around and several of the shots were group photos that required a wider angle.

Not surprisingly I was not the only one taking pictures, so it was a bit hard to get both the bride and the groom to look into the same camera at the same time. That either makes them look a bit weird, or it can give the picture an artistic feel. In my case it just looked weird. It was also very hard for people to stay put without moving their heads or arms around, so I took my fair share of blurry pictures. I’ve been told that 1/30 shutter and f/16 aperture with a bit of under exposure to avoid complete burn out of the white wedding dress would be a hit on wedding photos, but I’m not sure. The 1/30 shutter will create blurry pictures as soon as people start moving a little, and since I was not controlling the crowd, I probably should have increased the shutter speed. The next time I’m out shooting, I think I will take a few shots while allowing the camera to control everything, then take note of the settings and play around with different variations to see how that change the quality of the picture. Continue reading "White on Black."