Photography Techniques - Wedding Photography 2

Wedding Photography Lighting Outdoors: Overcast Day


You have arrived at the venue and look to the sky. It is cloudy and looks like it may rain later. You are the photographer for their wedding day and your thinking

How am i going to make the images look bright and colorful, with this sky full of cloud and everyone running for shelter when it rains?


The images you will take today could look dull. Here is a technique to try. If you are using a digital camera use the histogram setting to take a picture of the happy couple outside the venue. The histogram will show the distribution of tones and the preview image will give you an idea of what it will look like. If the image looks dull and under exposed add some exposure with the +/-1 stop button on the camera. You want the white dress to be the brightest high light in the scene. Experiment by adding exposure to brighten the image. I shoot with an 81A Warm up Filter attached to the lens with the camera set to raw images and add +1 stop exposure. This brightens and warms up the image to make the skin tones glow. After the wedding when you are using the raw converter software you can tweak the images and slightly saturate the colors as much as they require.


Advice: Do not expect to take dull photographs on the wedding day and retouch later. You will spend hours in front of a computer screen and have trouble color matching your images. If you can, try to get everything well exposed in the camera.

If you require any information about photography techniques please visit www.pureprints.co.uk


Richard Barley
pureprints.com