First wedding session; Kyra and Gijs.

One of my best friends got married last friday. They asked / I offered to shoot it. It was my first wedding, so to get at least some good shots out of the dress without the ceremony stress bothering us, we did a morning session.

Here's some shots from it:

#1
Posing on a picnic cloth. Sun was kind of bright, but I think I managed to balance it with flash power to keep it from blowing out the dress.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …in/set-72157622055879575/

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Really great lighting! so you had your wireless flash down there on the ground plus the umbrellas? Where did you point the flash in general?
What were the camera and flash settings?

Again really great use of flash!

ana1976 wrote in post #8553679
Really great lighting! so you had your wireless flash down there on the ground plus the umbrellas? Where did you point the flash in general?
What were the camera and flash settings?

Again really great use of flash!

Thanks

I used 2 x Nikon SB-80DX (but I could have used any sort of manual flash really) on the umbrellas and a SB-24 on the ground (on a tiny manfrotto tripod). All wirelessly fired by Cactus v4 triggers. The shoot through was around quarter to half power and the reflective between full and half power most of the time. The flash on the ground was just to get some hair-/contour light going against the darker backgrounds, so that may have been around 1/16th power. I used it for some extra fill (but from far away) in the car and the tree shots.
There's exif in the "original size" versions on flickr for the camera settings, but the equipment was a Canon 40D and Tamron 17-50 (which I love again now).

Still have to do some cloning on the car shots, because I can't stand to see myself or my flashes in reflections

Forgive my ignorance but I weant to ask what's the difference between the shoot through and the refelective and which is which?

Reflective is where you aim the inside of the umbrella to your subject. The light from the flash bounces from the inside of the umbrella (usually silver or white with a black outside).
Shoot through is a slightly thinner umbrella that you use as a sort of softbox, so you aim the outside to your subject.
They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Reflective offers me a tiny bit more control on where I aim the light, so I use the higher powered flash setting with that (full power to 1/4 power).
Shoot through is nice because you can put it really close and get wonderful soft (almost shadowless) lighting as a fill light at like 1/4 - 1/8 power.
I happened to have 2 shoot through umbrellas and one reflective, otherwise I would have probably used two reflective umbrellas.

There's also convertible ones that have a removable black cover.

Getting another set of umbrellas though, because I wrecked one shoot-through during some heavy wind and the reflective took a fair beating as well...

'Broken down' Car one shows the couples' fun side nicely

I really like the concept of the car pictures...but I have some nitpicks about some of the others. I think you did a good job "not being a pro" as you stated.

#1 - Great ambient/flash balance, but would like to see his face more.

#2 - Bride beside big tree, just not feeling this one.

#5 - Looks like you really crushed the ambient on this one, not as good of a balance like #1 and #4

Keep on getting out there, you are on the right track as far as "what to do" lighting wise. Thank you for sharing, I hope my observations help!

Thanks for the encouragement and especially thanks for your pointers catlover!

I have a few variations on #1 (as I did on most images), but in my opinion, this one really showed a bit of intimacy between them.

The same counts for #5 really, I wanted some mixed ambient variations - to see what works because chimping my LCD in daylight, it's hard to judge...

I started out with metering the ambient and going 1 stop below it to set the flash exposure, and then fine-tuning / tweaking the flash exposure by setting the same exposure but with a slightly different aperture and compensating the ambient exposure.

Eitherway, I got a lot of field practice out of this. I was already familiar with all the equipment - using them at work and indoors, but it's something else to do it out in the field, with heavy wind and clouds constantly changing your ambient. Lots of fun though

Fortunately, I have plenty of pages to fill for the wedding album - which will be the final product of this session. Just gotta pick a cover now :O

TweakMDS wrote in post #8582746
Thanks for the encouragement and especially thanks for your pointers catlover!

I have a few variations on #1 (as I did on most images), but in my opinion, this one really showed a bit of intimacy between them.

The same counts for #5 really, I wanted some mixed ambient variations - to see what works because chimping my LCD in daylight, it's hard to judge...

I started out with metering the ambient and going 1 stop below it to set the flash exposure, and then fine-tuning / tweaking the flash exposure by setting the same exposure but with a slightly different aperture and compensating the ambient exposure.

Eitherway, I got a lot of field practice out of this. I was already familiar with all the equipment - using them at work and indoors, but it's something else to do it out in the field, with heavy wind and clouds constantly changing your ambient. Lots of fun though

Fortunately, I have plenty of pages to fill for the wedding album - which will be the final product of this session. Just gotta pick a cover now :O

I understand completely when trying to view the LCD to check exposure, I didn't realize how bad and "muddy" looking the 30D screen was until I upgraded to something else. I use the same technique for flash, I leave the flash off and then take some without it, when the ambient looks good I turn the flash on and then shoot a few more while adjusting the output.

I like 3. Just would have liked to see only the tree not the green behind the grooms head.