So yesterday was my first bridal portrait session.  The whole week was saying rain, rain, rain and Crystal and I were both wanting to get the portraits done before I went back to school this Saturday so we were praying for no rain.  We first scheduled Monday but it poured, so we rescheduled Wednesday and it rained a little bit at first that day, but later it didn’t so we went ahead with it and thankfully there was no rain.  Crystal and Chandler were my guinea pigs when I did their engagement session (because it was my first engagement session) and so Crystal was also my guinea pig for the bridal session.

I feel like mostly everything went really well and went pretty fast.  I might have said in a blog before how it really helps to know the location beforehand, so using my own home has worked great with shooting portraits lately. I can look for certain spots I want to shoot, and if I need to use a prop, I can go ahead and put it there and I can move really fast.  I know one thing I wish I could’ve changed was the time to shoot.  I started realizing that the sun fell behind our trees quicker than I thought, but I still was able to get the shots I basically wanted. I did wish I had a couple more off camera lights to use, but I only had one to use.  There were little annoyances like bugs that kept crawling in her gown and veil that you had to keep a look out for, and it was really humid so her bangs kept falling in her face, and also because this was her bridal gown, you had to watch out for it not getting ruined.  I mainly just used a white sheet to put under her where she sat or where she stood when she got in the woods.  It was great to have one of her friends there to assist her with her gown and her hair when I couldn’t.  One huge inconvenience was when they walked by some yellow jackets and both got stung, and I was thinking…. yeah this isn’t good. Ha. But they were both really great about it and wanted to keep shooting so I thought that was awesome.  I really want my clients to get the best out of me that they can, so even when my clients are like… “ah I don’t really care what you do, you can just put me next to a tree and make me stand there and I’d good with that!”  Even when they say that, I still want to try my best and take the time to get props such as a love seat to put outside or a vanity set with a mirror in a field or whatever else to give her something different.

I’m going through the photos and editing them and I’m actually pretty surprised that my first bridal portraits turned out better than I expected!  When I edit, I try to do as little as possible so I don’t completely kill the image. Sometimes I’ll just go for a little bit of a warm look and sometimes I very it with cooler tones so they can pick what they like best.  I also usually use the same image I kept in color and duplicate it as a black and white or duotone copy to see what they like best.  I’m starting to really love using Duotone which instead of using black and white I use black and a brown tone and give it (or hopefully give it) more richer tones.  I used to get carried away with editing at first because all the fun things you can do with photoshop, but really it’s the lighting that makes the image.  I still have a lot to learn with lighting though.  I usually just use ambient light cause sometimes that’s all I have.  The main thing though I try to look for when just using sunlight is watching out for hotspots or at least that’s what I call them.  It’s when the direct sunlight hits their face in an unflattering way and creates these random highlights and shadows. The best way that I’ll get rid of that is by putting them under shade or using an umbrella to shield them.  Overcast days are the best days to shoot.  

Well, I won’t put the images I took from the bridal shoot up online until after her wedding which is in October.  If anyone would like to take a look at them, just let me know!  I think I’m going to really enjoy shooting more bridal portraits in the future.