Second Wedding- C&C appreciated

Hi All,

Finished up my second wedding. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, especially with my experience level. I shot the photos with the 5D2, most of them were either the 24-70 or the 70-200IS.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions to help me, espeically with composition and lighting.

Thank you for looking!

Full Blog post with 120 pictures here: http://marshallphotogr​aphyks.com …/wichita-wedding-bachman/

1.

1 and 2 look just a tiny bit over saturated on my monitor, otherwise great shots. Looks like a job well done to me.

Looks good but you might want to adjust WB on a couple, seem a bit warm.

I think you did a good job but will help your images to do a better job during pp, if you need help working with Lightroom and getting some presets, members of this board are pretty helpful in that department.

Start by following Dagolmagin comment, play with WB and also try to use Vibrance instead of Saturation.
Keep at it, you are on the right track.

The focus seems to be off in most of them. It might just be my eyes playing tricks on me. Anyways, here are my comments (besides the focusing):

#2 - There's a bright rock going through her head (her left) that's distracting. I'd move her away from the wall further and/or reposition her along the wall.

#3 - I think this could use a tighter crop.

#4 - This one's nice.

#6 - The tree through their heads isn't very pleasing. I'd reposition them.

#7 - This is pretty cute.

Overall, I think you did pretty good! Just watch your backgrounds and keep shooting!

1st weddings are tough...I still remember my first 5... Oh, I was horrible!!
Back then there were no other photographers to take ideas from. You had to come up with stuff on your own and it was a lot of pressure.

Watch your WB and try your best to properly expose your images. #5 is a bit dark,as you can see yourself. A touch of fill flash would've fixed that.

not bad for your 2nd wedding.. i'd correct the white balance like dago said. also, the images seem a bit soft, and could do with a bit of sharpening, especially on that group shot, imo.

Agree with the other comments, but could use a boost in processing. They all feel a little muddy to me. Also for me #2 looks like the focus missed her face. But not a bad job as a whole.

For many of those, I would have cut the shutter speed in half (or even dropped it to a quarter) and decreased the ISO accordingly.

Sometimes you can't control the ratio of the light falling on your subject vs. the ambient of the background. But in many of these it seems to me that you should have and did not.

For 1,2 (less so here),5,6,7 I probably would have introduced off camera lighting and brought the ambient (background) down. Given that the venue isn't exactly decked out (prison/school style concrete block walls), creative use of lighting to create atmosphere was really needed, I think.

Okay, okay--It's true that for a second wedding, it may be a bit much to expect. But for the future, I'd recommend introducing off camera lighting at least for the formal group shots (shot 5, e.g.). A few practice sessions and you'll be able to set these up and bang them off in 10 minutes.

#1 Seems soft and the WB is off
#2 Seems soft and the WB is off
#3 Still soft but looks better
#4 Soft but nice candid moment
#5 Soft and the bridsmaids could have been posed a better
#6 Soft and the tree kills this one for me
#7 Lighting is a bit flat but it is ok

Kudos for not trying to use a wacky action in photoshop. Good first attempt and keep at it

scorpio_e wrote in post #15409288
#1 Seems soft and the WB is off
#2 Seems soft and the WB is off
#3 Still soft but looks better
#4 Soft but nice candid moment
#5 Soft and the bridsmaids could have been posed a better
#6 Soft and the tree kills this one for me
#7 Lighting is a bit flat but it is ok

Kudos for not trying to use a wacky action in photoshop. Good first attempt and keep at it

The WB is a little warm, is it set for AWB?

But the other weddings you have done, the WB is correct: http://marshallphotogr​aphyks.com/weddings/

what others said.. most pictures look too warm for my liking.

It's solid work but you can improve by making each image a little brighter and improving the WB. 2,3 and 4 would benefit from cropping.

Thank you everyone for the comments! I really appreciate it! Sorry it took so long for my reply, I got lost in the Christmas rush!

White Balance is one of my biggest difficulties. I manually 'tune' every image in DPP, then when they are outputted, they look different in the photo viewer, or online <all this using the same screen/pc>. I am not yet using a calibrated screen, but my clients (and potential clients online) will not have one either, I want them to look good there too. Any suggestions on how to best control this?

On the softness of the images, these are very sharp on my computer, I haven't figured out how to export for the web to have the images still look sharp. I will do some research on that.

Thanks again for the comments and critiques!