Shot This Wedding During Hurricane Sandy C/C Welcomed

deepsixphoto · Nov 10, 2012

The conditions of this wedding were less than perfect - we weren't sure if we'd be able to get home afterwards due to road closures and general craziness here in Jersey. The couple was Croatian, and had different wedding customs than I was used to - it also proved a challenge to communicate (just a little!). They were super sweet, and had all their loved ones watching them tie the knot via Skype (hence the phone photos).
This was really the first wedding I've shot - all critique welcome. The lighting inside the bed and breakfast was very poor.

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More of the set available here: facebook.com/deepsixphotography

Granddad · Nov 12, 2012

I like 2, 3 and 4 best. You got them looking genuinely and delightfully happy ... and isn't that what wedding photography is supposed to be about?
On the tech side, have you tried cooling the colours down a wee bit in photoshop or lightroom (1,3,4 and 6)?

Tee · Nov 12, 2012

I would suggest taking a good look at your white balance for the indoor images. I would not be a happy customer if I got these looking like that.

Big Mike · Nov 12, 2012

Good for you and them for going ahead with it, despite the trying circumstances.

As for the photos here, I agree with the comment above...the white balance is very noticeably off. Tough situation with indoor lighting and window light (in a couple of them), but a wedding photographer should know how to deal with that, or at least make the best of it and make sure that the subjects are correctly balanced.

The indoor ones aren't sharp. I see motion blur, which means your shutter speed wasn't fast enough and there is also a lot of noise, which means you either use a really high ISO and/or increased the brightness in post. It's understandable that in low lighting situations that you use a high ISO and try to push your luck with the shutter speed...but that is why wedding photographers use lenses with large apertures and also why we use flash. It doesn't look like you're using flash...why not?

Lastly, in a couple of these shots, you are shooting up at them. This is very seldom a good angle to shoot people at. Rule of thumb, if you can see up their nose...it's probably not good. I can understand a candid shot of her coming down some stairs, but the one looking up at both of them....it's just not a great idea. They both look worse than they should and the lighting there (with no flash) is terrible. If you had reversed positions and shot down onto them, they would look much, much better.

As mentioned, you have them looking happy on their wedding day, which counts for a lot. But there are also a lot of 'technical' issues here.