This weekends wedding

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Craig
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Had a wedding at the weekend and to say I was nervous was an understatement. The service was to take place in a very small very dark church with the reception in a marquee in a field with not so much as a tree for shelter for about a mile around. The only other place they wanted to go was a small secluded shingle beach on the way to the reception location. Checked the forecast the day before and it was to be heavy rain until at least 3pm which didn't mix very well with the chosen locations.

Fortunately something alligned as it was dry all day and cleared up nicely in the late afternoon so managed to get a lot more than I was anticipating. Still need to look through them all properlly but edited a couple for facebook for the couple to share.

Stuart and Angie (1) by Craig Dawson, on Flickr

Stuart and Angie (3) by Craig Dawson, on Flickr

Stuart and Angie (2) by Craig Dawson, on Flickr

Stuart and Angie (4) by Craig Dawson, on Flickr
 
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I appreciate the shot with little girl as it
doesn't have a well blown out sky for a
first point. A second one is the brilliant
treatment you diid there and the natural
expression. Cool frame!
 
OO very nice, they've got a distinctive character & atmosphere. I'll leave others to comment on the wedding-specific stuff.

Did you have to do some work to restore some contrast on the faces in 2 & 4? Just maybe it could be backed off a little. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong..
2 & 3 could usefully lose some off the top I reckon.

And 2.. if it were me and I wasn't processing dozens I'd try to find a similar pose from the same set to restore her cropped hand. Still a corker, though.
 
I think these are wonderful - my experience in wedding photography is next to nil, so as Simon mentioned, can't comment on the 'wedding' aspect, but as portraits, I think they're wonderful. I love the processing on them.

And now that the hand thing has been noted, that would be my only niggle, but didn't really notice it til it was mentioned.
 
Thanks guys :)

OO very nice, they've got a distinctive character & atmosphere. I'll leave others to comment on the wedding-specific stuff.

Did you have to do some work to restore some contrast on the faces in 2 & 4? Just maybe it could be backed off a little. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong..
2 & 3 could usefully lose some off the top I reckon.

And 2.. if it were me and I wasn't processing dozens I'd try to find a similar pose from the same set to restore her cropped hand. Still a corker, though.

Apart from the last one they have fairly minimal processing to be honest, I'm trying out capture one at the moment so these were edited in it and photoshop, not decided if I'm going to use it for the whole wedding. They all got a bit of sharpening and a slight contrast curve then in photoshop I added a slight warming curve masked with a radial gradient from the light source and I think I cleaned up the brides neck line a wee bit where sun and makeup were breaking up the skin tones Probably dodged the faces a we bit for prominence as well. Heres the d750's sooc jpg for comparison. I've got quite a few from each of the setups going from full length to headshot so will have options, these were just the ones I picked for expression to edit a couple quickly.

CDP_4600.jpg
 
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Well done Craig.
These look really great very profesh.
You should be well chuffed with these !
Sorry but I can't crit anything :)


Gaz
 
OK, speaking as a retired wedding snapper and working on the assumption that you're after more gigs ...

#1 is perfectly OK AFAIC, but the cropping's a bit vague for my taste. Personally, I'd go for something more like ...

crop01_zpshatfhmsn.jpg


#2 Expression's well caught and the light's good, but the crop makes no sense to me. You definitely needed those fingers, but my biggest reservation is that a bride standing with one hand on her hip like that never looks right unless she's giving you major attitude, which this one isn't. That's just not a "bride" pose. It's an "Are you ever going to finish washing that car?" pose. (NB I'm not saying that posed bridal shots have to follow the conventions, only that if you deviate from those conventions, both the pose and the expression still need to work together - and they then send out a different message to the usual one.)

#3 is fine by me. But to my way of thinking that's still a vague, "not quite sure what I ought to do with this" crop.

#4 Love it as it is. That's as close to 100% as you've any right to expect.

HTH a bit :)
 
I like the processing and his look. The posing works for me we'll too. If I'm honest though I feel a bit disconnected from her
 
#1 is perfectly OK AFAIC, but the cropping's a bit vague for my taste. Personally, I'd go for something more like ...

#2 Expression's well caught and the light's good, but the crop makes no sense to me. You definitely needed those fingers, but my biggest reservation is that a bride standing with one hand on her hip like that never looks right unless she's giving you major attitude, which this one isn't. That's just not a "bride" pose. It's an "Are you ever going to finish washing that car?" pose. (NB I'm not saying that posed bridal shots have to follow the conventions, only that if you deviate from those conventions, both the pose and the expression still need to work together - and they then send out a different message to the usual one.)

#3 is fine by me. But to my way of thinking that's still a vague, "not quite sure what I ought to do with this" crop.

#4 Love it as it is. That's as close to 100% as you've any right to expect.

HTH a bit :)

Thanks for the pointers the first one is deliberately framed a bit looser, the wedding was on their farm which overlooks sweetheart abbey which is the ruin in the background. I shot this one at f11 and a bit wider to incorporate the view which was important for them. I personally find the tighter crop on this one you lose a bit of the setting which was the aim of the photos. I do have some tighter crops similar to this at f4 which focuses on them a bit more.

I'll definitely take that on board about the crops when I edit the set properlly, these are basically out of camera, whilst I'm definitely not trying to scare off clients as i do enjoy weddings and want to do more, it's largely just for enjoyment for me so not chasing lots of work. These were just quick edits of images I thought caught their personality and required minimal work so they could get something nice, hopefully, to show of fthe next morning rather than the flood of cameraphone pics that will flood facebook.
 
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... it's largely just for enjoyment for me so not chasing lots of work

Sorry Craig, my bad (as presumably they still say in America). In that case, they're fine :)

ETA - that's a good illustration of how you see things differently if you're an established wedding snapper. You've explained the composition of #1, and that's perfectly valid for both you and the couple. But if you were after more wedding work and you put that in your portfolio as it stands, you wouldn't do yourself any favours. 80% of brides looking at it would wonder why you'd cut off the bouquet ...
 
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Sorry Craig, my bad (as presumably they still say in America). In that case, they're fine :)

Don't get me wrong, I charge people and would like more work so I want to deliver the best product I can. All I mean is I have a secure job, which I don't hate, and enjoy the benefits it has with pension, sick pay, realiabilty etc. To that effect at present I'm not posting anything with a hard marketing strategy where I'm reliant on generating work to feed my family but still want to post work that I can be proud of.

I'd always rather have honest critique whether it's good or bad and definitely don't want to be blassse about handing off bad work to anyone. I always want to be, and feel hopefully at the moment I am, improving and the only way to do that is by identifying and working on what can be made better.
 
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