Upcoming Beach Wedding
Rello-Fello
Registered Users Posts: 9 Beginner grinner
Everyone,
Im shooting my last wedding of the season next weekend. It's an outdoor beach wedding in VA Beach. The wedding Starts at 6pm.
Since this is the last and outdoors Im looking for ideas on lighting and metering. I dont expect it to get dark until around 8pm so with the ceremony lasting about an hour in good sunlight that leaves me about an hour of quickly changing light for formals.
Of course I cant run extension cords out to the beach and use my normans but what do you all think about the following:
1. off camera flash fill
2. polarizer for decreasing the ocean reflections
3. bringing a diffusion panel
4. being on the east coast the sun should be behind us if we are shooting to the ocean.... long soft shadows in the afternoon that should wrap around hte subjects
5. ideas for unique shots on the beach... Should I have her bury him in the sand? lol
PS I cant setup too much because I have to imediately run in and start shooting for the reception. geesh im learning that a second shooter is nice.
Thanks in advance for your helping me make this last wedding the best yet.
Thomas
Im shooting my last wedding of the season next weekend. It's an outdoor beach wedding in VA Beach. The wedding Starts at 6pm.
Since this is the last and outdoors Im looking for ideas on lighting and metering. I dont expect it to get dark until around 8pm so with the ceremony lasting about an hour in good sunlight that leaves me about an hour of quickly changing light for formals.
Of course I cant run extension cords out to the beach and use my normans but what do you all think about the following:
1. off camera flash fill
2. polarizer for decreasing the ocean reflections
3. bringing a diffusion panel
4. being on the east coast the sun should be behind us if we are shooting to the ocean.... long soft shadows in the afternoon that should wrap around hte subjects
5. ideas for unique shots on the beach... Should I have her bury him in the sand? lol
PS I cant setup too much because I have to imediately run in and start shooting for the reception. geesh im learning that a second shooter is nice.
Thanks in advance for your helping me make this last wedding the best yet.
Thomas
0
Comments
It's really going to stink to have to take care of the formals right after the ceremony and THEN get to your private portraits. Can you not convince the couple to see each other before the wedding? That would give you as much time as you want to shoot some quality portraits of just the two of them.
If not, then BE ADAMANT that you only have 10-20 minutes for the family photo. Light a fire under the bride's butt, you need to convince her to get some of her friends or whoever, to help organize that family formal and get it done quickly. You may need to yell. I photographed one wedding where the bride wanted to take multipe group photos of completely different goups of 20+ people. Not just families, but work friends, church friends, etc. I almost told her that I was not the right kind of photographer. But she was incredibly organized, and by my prompting we literally kept people sitting in their pews, dismissed them group by group over the microphone, and got it done in 20 minutes or less.
Anyways my point is, you wanna do whatever it takes to get as much time as possible with the bride and groom alone. Figure out a setup that lets you shoot those group shots quickly. Maybe if the light is bright enough, just use a tripod and rely on the softness of the fading light to get your family photos without flash. But scout it out of course, and use flash / diffusion etc. if you need to...
Oh, and one more thing. Once you get that taken care of and are ready to shoot portraits with the bride and groom alone, try and get away from the crowd. Either insist that everyone leave and head to the reception IMMEDIATELY so you can be alone to shoot, or ditch them and find your own secluded patch of beach to shoot on. It is, in my opinion, critical that you don't have uncle bob or grandma hanging around distracting you and your subjects from the task of getting some great portraits...
Good luck!
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
I have a short time and I will shoot solo for this one as its two late to hire a second shooter. SO i think the scouting and flash on a support are my two best bets for moving forward.
Thanks...
I had hoped for more responses but I guess people are only excited to post critiques
Thanks again Matt...
I'm not a wedding photog; just lurking, just thoughts for your consideration..
The sun behind you will also cast your shadow in some shots. Maybe use the low sunlight as backlight?
Portable Power: Car stores (like Kragen) sell emergency batteries; for use when your car battery goes dead. They have a handle (are battery heavy) and have outlets for cigarette lighter & some have 110 sockets. I don't remember what mine has.
If it doesn't have a 110 socket get an inverter (that plugs in the cigarette socket) in the same store - to allow you to plug in your lights.
All,
The wedding went fine. I did however not expect the wind gusts which happened at the rehearsal. I suddenly remembered that fine grains of sand will render a camera and equipment useless and inoperable. I had my sekonic in the air for about 10 minutes with the changing light and i was unable to return the dome to the lowered position. This would have killed lenses. I called my cam shop to ask for advice and the best thing was dry cleaning plastic or a rain jacket over me and the camera.
I opted for the plastic with rubber bands covering everything but the lens and rear eyepiece. Luckily it rained the night before and settled the loose sand so any wind didnt produce the fine grit. ( that was blessing)
Wedding went fine with off camera flash fill and the sun doing the rest of the work.
Random cloud cover produced just enough diffusion and the rainbow added some character. Ill post soon.
Thanks for your advice.