Hardest wedding ceremony ever!!

futureal33

futureal33

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Just got round to start processing a wedding I photographed about 2 weeks ago, which I knew at the time was going to be a nightmare processing wise!

How wrong was I!!!

It isn't a nightmare, its an absolute processing job from hell!

To start with, the registrar was one of the strictest I've encountered. She explained that the floorboards are over 100 years old and are extremely squeaky (she wasn't wrong!!) so I wouldn't be able to move during the ceremony because of this. Also she wanted me to her left, which was the opposite of what I had in mind - as there was a huge bay window to her right - which I ideally wanted behind me... yet now I was shooting with that on my right - lighting one side of their faces up, and the other side of their face (my side) was in complete shadow.

And to top things of... you guessed it.... no flash during ceremony.

The moment she finished telling me this, the bride arrived... leaving me about 5 seconds to decide on a lens choice, fit said lens, get outside to get brides arrival.

I opted for a 16-35 f2.8 II and 85mm 1.8 on my other camera (2 x 5DIII bodies), with a 35mm 1.4 to my right on a chair - so I could swap if I needed to.

I then ran back inside to try and determine my settings as I wanted to shoot in manual because of the very strong side lighting situation... here came the next shock... the room was horrifically dark - MUCH darker than it looked to my eyes. I was needing ISO 8000 to get my metering how I wanted it, that with a 1/60th shutter speed and f2.8 aperture.

Here's a shot to show what I was dealing with lighting wise:


5D3_9730 by futureal333, on Flickr

Then the next problem. Suddenly the sun came out outside! All my settings were now massively overkill. Back down to ISO 2000, then back upto 8000 when it went back in... repeat over and over... all the way through the service.

Also, framing wise (because I was static and couldn't move without the floorboards sounding like they would going to crack, and disrupting an otherwise silent room) I was limited to about 20-28mm where I could get them both in shot, and still give some context (ie, not just a headshot). The 85mm was useful for individual headshots only. Everything else was shot around 24mm f2.8 on my 16-35. The 35mm 1.4 would have been too narrow to get the framing right, although the f1.4 would have saved me a lot.

Using any of the automatic modes such as AV resulted in erratic metering because the back of the room was darker than the front - resulting in over exposing. Dialing in negative EV didnt ALWAYS work, some shots would still be over or now, massively under! So I stuck to M and pretty much ignored my light meter.

Anyway, rambling on a bit here.

Just come to process them and the final nail in the coffin is that the room is awfully yellow, resulting in yellow skin tones throughout. Correcting the WB doesnt get rid of the yellow-ness. The ceiling (although it looks white on the above photo) is actually an yellowy white colour - which was clearly causing a lot of yellow reflection, add to that that the walls are light wood, which was also reflecting orange/yellow back off them... and finally the floor... that 100 year old squeaky oak... you guessed it... yellow reflections there too.

I have had to bring my yellow channel saturation right down -60 on most photos to get it looking half normal. Here is one with the correct WB but untouched yellows:

Correct WB - no yellow reduction:

5D3_9734 by futureal333, on Flickr

I see a lot of grainy ISO 8000 B&Ws coming on!

Here's one!


5D3_9741 by futureal333, on Flickr


Just wondering how others would have dealt with this situation?
 
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theurbanclown said:
Sure the couple will be happy with them.

Next time, stick the camera into auto iso, set min shutter speed to 1/125 or 1/250 depending on what iso levels you're happy shooting at and nail the exposure. Should make things easier.
Click to expand...

Ben,
Unfortunately auto ISO was no good here, as that relies on the light meter to determine the exposure (or ISO setting). In this situation my light meter was as much as -2 (full stops) and up around +2 when shooting into the window light - hence why I needed to pretty much ignore the meter and just work it out in my head.

Add to that the sun coming out all the time, lighting the front of the room up (through the window) but not affecting the back of the room (really dark!) - it was a nightmare
 
Wow, that looks really tricky! Well done for getting such good results which I'm sure the bride and groom will be delighted with.
 
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Well, I wouldn't start from here......

The simplest fix is the most obvious. Have a chat with the celebrant and see how serious she is about your being on the left. If you can negotiate a change of side with her, you will solve half the lighting problems. Also, start that conversation early so you aren't caught out at the last minute.

Also shooting with longer lens will exclude some of the window light and again solve many exposure problems. And if the light's in and out then wait until it's "out" to take a pic of the whole room or the contrast will defeat you like it's doing here.

Wood panelling = orange pics. Pretty much always.

In your top pic, when you edit this, you'll need a split white balance to stop the colour shift across the room. You can also even up the lighting while you're at it.

This is why you get the big money, right?
 
futureal33 said:
Ben,
Unfortunately auto ISO was no good here, as that relies on the light meter to determine the exposure (or ISO setting). In this situation my light meter was as much as -2 (full stops) and up around +2 when shooting into the window light - hence why I needed to pretty much ignore the meter and just work it out in my head.

Add to that the sun coming out all the time, lighting the front of the room up (through the window) but not affecting the back of the room (really dark!) - it was a nightmare
Click to expand...

Wouldn't spot metering on the bride's dress fix this problem though? I had a similar situation where using evaluative the B&G were very uner exposed, but when I switched to spot metering it got the exposure right for the couple.

BTW the first shot looks fantastic and despite being a pixel peeper I can't see anything wrong with it... looks great!

2nd shot i'd strip some of the orange out in LR using the colour sliders set to saturation

Looks like you did a really good job despite the less than ideal conditions :)
 
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Regardless, youve done a fantastic job here! The bride and groom look fantastic and beautiful so well done, as thats whats important :)
 
Tricky, but looks like you got away with it. Also, they look like a great couple to work with :)

Did you check out the venue beforehand? Obviously we don't know what package they bought, but your full day package includes a "Pre wedding visit to your venue"

I would and always do, scout out the venue first on any package booked.
 
not a pro, but I can't understand how you can light meter the room when you have a huge and variable light source (the window) and can't move!
I guess the registrar wouldn't have liked bracketed rapid fire multiple exposures either!
looks very tricky, even the furnishings and wood paneling are yellow-ish.
well done, would love to see the B&G shots that you got too later on. looks like quite a characterful couple!
 
I don't do weddings, I think I know why :).
From picture posted you look to have made the best of a bad situation. Using the wide angle lens has thrown the uprights out, but you could pull them in I guess, but as you said you were put into a very dificult position - literally.
It does look a great wedding to shoot though, it makes a real change to see clothes in all their variety instead of black lounge suits for men and pastel twin sets for womem.
That big window didn't do you any favours did it, but I'm glad you controlled the exposure to allow some view through the window and glazing bars and it not appearing as a huge white blown featureless slab.
As for colour balance, I sometimes shoot some amatuer dance show, local community theatre, and the only thing I try to do is get the skin tones about right. You say there is a yellow caste, the people in the service won't have seen that, so for me it doesn't matter what it does to the room colours, they won't remember them anyway, but they would notice a room full of chinamen.
 
futureal33 said:
Ben,
Unfortunately auto ISO was no good here, as that relies on the light meter to determine the exposure (or ISO setting). In this situation my light meter was as much as -2 (full stops) and up around +2 when shooting into the window light - hence why I needed to pretty much ignore the meter and just work it out in my head.

Add to that the sun coming out all the time, lighting the front of the room up (through the window) but not affecting the back of the room (really dark!) - it was a nightmare
Click to expand...

just a thought, why not apply a gradient mask from the right to the left, as you would for a sunset or landscape? then you can tone down the excess of light coming in from the right...?? just a thought
 
What a fantastic wedding! I think the images are brilliant. If I was the bride I would be over the moon with these. A fantastic record of such an unusual wedding :)
 
I don't often comment but that WAS a challenging situation - gotta say the end result is a fantastic set of shots. A job well done, sir.
 
You've done a great job. Very impressed with the final results. :)
 
Wow an amazing set of images regardless, but given the circumstances, even more impressive!!
 
the pics look ok, especially the B&W one. the white balance can be repaired. some LED lights might help
 
that wedding looks fantastic, and I think you've captured it really well despite the conditions! Looks like a great record of a unique day!
 
Looks great ! I wouldn't have used auto ISO either...I rarely use auto-anything. If you have to go up and down the ISO manually then that's what's got to happen. I'm not sure what your style of shooting is but I really pick and choose which shots I'm taking during a ceremony rather than just blasting away (which can be distracting for the bride, groom and guests). You've got some cool shots from the position you were limited to but one thing someone else mentioned was scouting the venue. It's something we always try to do unless it's really miles and miles away. If that's the case we leave enough time to get to the venue early to check everything out. I guess that's one of the benefits of working as a wedding photography team - the wife is with the bride in the morning before the ceremony and I hang out with the guys. The groom gets to the venue earlier than everyone giving me loads of time to scout if I haven't done so already. Your shots are cool though and your couple will be really happy with them!
 
Phil Young said:
I always use auto iso - I usually pop the camera into manual with auto iso since it needs to be whatever it needs to be to get the shutter and aperture you desire...
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That's fine if you shoot Nikon IIRC, but it's completely useless with Canon.

Nikon allows EC to be set in Manual mode (seems counter intuitive to me) but Canon doesn't. So a canon with auto ISO set isn't Manual at all because the camera chooses the exposure and you have no way of overriding it.

So if you're using auto ISO on a canon, M mode becomes 'set your chosen aperture and shutter speed, but you have no control over the exposure' mode! Which is about the most useless thing in the world.
 
Maybe just me ? But the first thing I would have done would have been to completely ignore the Registrar.
You get on with your job I'll get on with mine,they have no juristriction over photographers it is merely courtesy
 
One of them things. Hope you don't mind but I put your pic in PS. Duplicated the layer, curves then grabbed the middle picker and found a mid grey area and clicked on it. I used the hanging pic at the back of the room then painted the grooms head in. Brought it back to about 70% and looked a bit more natural
 
They good great – especially given the lighting problems you faced. The post above gives one idea that is definitely worth trying on an image like this – here is another equivalent which can work well too.

In photoshop, taking the black and white pic in your series above, you could try this: select the burnt out window and bridesmaids (with feathering set at maybe 20), add a layer and select 'multiply' and bring the slider back to perhaps a 50% opacity. If you make the initial selection along edges (say the windows inc the curtains) you'll get an acceptable result with some practice. Practice on a .ps or tiff copy file. With practice it's an workable (although slightly fiddly) way of bringing back some detail in bright areas. Of course, if the scene is burnt out completely, you won't get detail back where there is no detail, but you should find with a bit of experimentation you can balance the picture up without it showing or looking too much like an HDR.
 
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Looks like you did a pretty good job considering the circumstances. I've toyed with the idea of just ignoring the registrar a few times but always decide against it, there are only so many of them locally and I don't think you don't want to get in their bad books. It's just another for of bad press you could do without.
 
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