This was my first wedding and I was told Thursday that the Wedding is Tuesday.
No prep time.
Most of the photos were good but when the wedding party walked down the aisle they were horrible.
******** The church door was open letting in this bright sun glare and I didn't know how to adapt to the condition at that time. ****
????? Hindsight I think using spot metering may have been the answer. If that is the answer do I meter the light or the faces? How would you adjust for the glare?
The important part of the photo (the couple) appears to be correctly exposed, unless you've had to do a lot of post-processing work to get it to the current state, so I don't think there was any problem with the metering, at least on this shot.
I presume you don't like the bright area where the doors are? I don't think there's a lot you could have done with camera settings to resolve this. More expensive lenses are more resistant to flare and loss of contrast in tricky lighting, so a lens upgrade may have resulted in less of the light 'bleeding' into the bride's arm.
If you spot-metered the faces, you'd probably get a similar or brighter image than you currently have, so the flare would have been more apparent. If you spot-metered the flare then the view through the window and door would be correctly exposed, and the bride, groom and everything else in the church would be in near-darkness.
My immediate thoughts on reducing/avoiding the issue would be:
1. Move/lean out to the left so that the bright open doors are blocked from the camera by the bride/groom, which would have prevented the flare and also reduced the amount that the groom's dark clothing is lost against the background of the pews (as more of him would have been in front of the carpet from a more leftward camera position).
2. Use (or use more, if you already were) flash, allowing you to drop the ISO and darken the background (including the overexposed windows and door) while keeping the bride and groom well lit. Again, this would also have brought more detail into the groom's clothing. The flash would also have frozen the slight motion blur which is visible, particularly in the groom's face. Care would need to be taken to not make it look over-lit.
Of course, depending on the bride and groom's wishes and your confidence levels, neither of those may have been an option.
Overall, given your location, the bride/groom's location, and the available lighting, I don't think you have anything to be upset about other than the person who left the doors open!
@abirkill. Thank you so much. this was one of the better shots.I had trouble with the glare with the wedding party as they were further from me and closer to the door. It was a hot day so the pastor wanted to let air in. Some couples faces were glarred out too
Kathy if you have some shots that you would especially like to salvage - perhaps try thru editing -- selecting the glare area with a generous feather, duplicating onto another layer & blend using multiply? It might be worth a try ?? ..
@myhrhelper Kathy either spot or centered metering could help, it will lighten the foreground which could blend nicely with the background. Good luck on your next shoot.
Do you shoot in RAW?
If you do, in lightroom you could reduce the highlights (though in the blown areas recovery is not possible it will reduce the glare) and reduce the exposure and then use an adjustment brush to bring the exposure back up on the couple.
@mummarazzii Yes now I always shoot in RAW and for the wedding shots in the past I did shoot in RAW. I now have Lightroom 5 so I see the value of RAW that I didn't in the past.
@roni At that time I think I did matrix metering at that time so I wondered if different metering would have helped but Alexis made a good point of blowing out the background if I meter the person or have the person in the shadow if I meter the light.
like @abirkill , I think that those were the only two options at the time. That said, I dont think the flash would really be an option as youd probably end up with couple exposed, lessening of the light on the door but everyone else would be too dark to see them.
I personally think in situations like this, you need to work on your angle - point 1 from @abirkill . If you lean to the left but make sure one of the couple blocks out the door. If you stick the door between the two of them, you'll still get the flare between them.
My preference would be lean to the right and get that door completely out of the shot!
In terms of post processing, I think the couple are nicely exposed, I'd maybe try dropping the temp a tiny bit and then taking a spot exposure adjustment brush and take the light down 1/2 - 1 stopm paying attention to the bride's arm. don't do too much, I think a little bit of flare can be nice.
In terms of retrieving the other "bad" shots, they're probably a bit dark right? Try this :
1. Up the exposure on the total shot by a few stops
2. Change to B&W
3. increase the contrast
4. restist the temptation to do smoothing, leave it grainy and edgy and see how it looks
I have enjoyed and made notes from this conversation. I can only humbly add that Candida's are always challenging. Most wedding photographers will stage all the shots.
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I presume you don't like the bright area where the doors are? I don't think there's a lot you could have done with camera settings to resolve this. More expensive lenses are more resistant to flare and loss of contrast in tricky lighting, so a lens upgrade may have resulted in less of the light 'bleeding' into the bride's arm.
If you spot-metered the faces, you'd probably get a similar or brighter image than you currently have, so the flare would have been more apparent. If you spot-metered the flare then the view through the window and door would be correctly exposed, and the bride, groom and everything else in the church would be in near-darkness.
My immediate thoughts on reducing/avoiding the issue would be:
1. Move/lean out to the left so that the bright open doors are blocked from the camera by the bride/groom, which would have prevented the flare and also reduced the amount that the groom's dark clothing is lost against the background of the pews (as more of him would have been in front of the carpet from a more leftward camera position).
2. Use (or use more, if you already were) flash, allowing you to drop the ISO and darken the background (including the overexposed windows and door) while keeping the bride and groom well lit. Again, this would also have brought more detail into the groom's clothing. The flash would also have frozen the slight motion blur which is visible, particularly in the groom's face. Care would need to be taken to not make it look over-lit.
Of course, depending on the bride and groom's wishes and your confidence levels, neither of those may have been an option.
Overall, given your location, the bride/groom's location, and the available lighting, I don't think you have anything to be upset about other than the person who left the doors open!
If you do, in lightroom you could reduce the highlights (though in the blown areas recovery is not possible it will reduce the glare) and reduce the exposure and then use an adjustment brush to bring the exposure back up on the couple.
@roni At that time I think I did matrix metering at that time so I wondered if different metering would have helped but Alexis made a good point of blowing out the background if I meter the person or have the person in the shadow if I meter the light.
I personally think in situations like this, you need to work on your angle - point 1 from @abirkill . If you lean to the left but make sure one of the couple blocks out the door. If you stick the door between the two of them, you'll still get the flare between them.
My preference would be lean to the right and get that door completely out of the shot!
In terms of post processing, I think the couple are nicely exposed, I'd maybe try dropping the temp a tiny bit and then taking a spot exposure adjustment brush and take the light down 1/2 - 1 stopm paying attention to the bride's arm. don't do too much, I think a little bit of flare can be nice.
In terms of retrieving the other "bad" shots, they're probably a bit dark right? Try this :
1. Up the exposure on the total shot by a few stops
2. Change to B&W
3. increase the contrast
4. restist the temptation to do smoothing, leave it grainy and edgy and see how it looks