First outside wedding shots

[Vaio]

I had done some outside wedding shots for my cousin...
here are some samples....

Info

Camera: Canon 10D
Lens: 50mm 1.4
Flash: 380EX

http://www.pbase.com/zimpatico/galleries

[ssim]

I like the first couple alot. I think the last one could have benefitted from a little fill flash.

[cowman345]

nice job! I'd be happy with that quality if you were my photographer. some of the shots might benefit from a bit of cropping to help the subject fill the frame a bit more and cut out the very mildly distracting background.

-dave-

[barnold999]

I agree with both, though on the last one, try boosting the contrast some, it should help the exposure.

But, they are nice.

[Vaio]

thanks for the compliments and the suggestion...

I will put some more up as soon as I can get some out there..

[Vaio]

oh guys, keep in mind that I used a Soft effects filter on the last picture

[scottbergerphoto]

vaio wrote:
oh guys, keep in mind that I used a Soft effects filter on the last picture
Still would have benefitted with flash set -1 to -1+2/3 flash exposure compensation. It would have put some catchlight in their eyes.

[Vaio]

Thanks Scott for the compliments and suggestions.. I think that I need to also upgrade later to a 550 EX ..

[kafene]

Whoya... nice shots.

Great lighting and nice poses. They look like they were easy to work with. The bride's beautiful and they both look very natural. Some couples just don't look good in pictures.

Regarding the last image, you might want to adjust brightness/contrast in Photoshop to lighten it up a bit.

kafene.

[scottbergerphoto]

vaio wrote:
Thanks Scott for the compliments and suggestions.. I think that I need to also upgrade later to a 550 EX ..
If you are going to be doing more weddings and similiar events, consider a more versatile flash like the Quantum Q Flash T2D. It uses an external battery pack. You can purchase modules that sit in the hot shoe and make it a dedicated flash for Canon, Nikon, etc.

http://www.qtm.com/flash/qft2.html

[GenDEM]

Some comments...it's always tough to be a critic on photos when the context is not evident...also, these are intended to be informative and definelty not desparaging in any way!

1. Are these cropped to a specific aspect ratio? If not, they should be, either 4x6 or 5x7

2. Some of the shots have too much surrounding area. For example, "A moment to remember" has a half cut off flower pot. Why? Either include it or crop it out (or better yet, don't have it there at all, see the next point)

3. You need to remember to think about backgrounds more. The half cut off flower pot is an example, but so it a water fountain coming out of the grooms head in "waterfountain" or a snippet of a brick wall in "happy couple". The top of the stone wall running through the bride's head in "B&W" is troubling too, but I'm not sure what could have been done differenly. BTW this is the one thing I personally have the hardest time remembering ;)

4. Figure out what the point of the photo is and stick to it. For example, the point of "the dress" is I assume to show the dress...well then, crop out everything else. The staircase is not the point. Unless of course the point is to show the staircase too! "Heavenly" could use a vertical crop to get rid of the large amounts of white (dead) space, and to focus in on the subjects rather than emphasise the blurry background.

5. Whatever you use to convert to black and white needs some tuning. "B&W" is a photo that is low in contrast, underexposed, and the dress gets lost in the stone.

6. f5.6 is too high IMO...it prevents the background from being sufficiently blurred out to keep the focus on the people. Think about how nice "True Love" could be if the flowers were blurry and were not fighting for attention with the subjects. Again though, perhaps the point was to get some of the background too? Dunno. I try never to go over F4 if I can help it.

7. In general the colours look a bit subdued.

Hope that helps without coming across ass too harsh!