It was 4 years ago this day that Zach and I stood with each other in front of 130 guests and committed to stick with each other ’till death do us part.

It’s unbelievable that we have been married four years.  Where does the time go??  We are celebrating our anniversary on the Caribbean seas and are pumped to finally go somewhere outside of TN to celebrate our anniversary.  Woo hoo!

Marriage most definitely is not easy and people were right when they told us “marriage takes a lot of continual work.”  Things definitely aren’t roses all the time, and we still don’t have everything perfect (yet… ;o), but we love each other and are committed to each other no matter what.  It’s hard at times, and easy at others… We’re so thankful that we have each other and we often like to joke that we are the other’s only friend because we spend SO much time together.  ha ha.

A few books that have been a huge blessing to our marriage… (click on the image for more info on the book).

We love talking with other couples and hearing their wisdom and advice when it comes to being married.  For those of you out there, what advice can you give us and others?  Bring it on!

Welcome to Part II of our photography Tips & Tricks with awesome couple, Blake & Andrea!

OK, so this shot (which is one of yours truly) is completely different than the last one, and is frankly very different than what you see with most modern wedding photography and we are going to talk about why. Now the pose and composition are obviously not something new, but the lighting and depth of the shot are and that is why it is not something you see a lot of at weddings. Lit shots like this one usually are not done because they take too long to set up, require lots of powerful lights which are heavy, and can be too in-your-face for some clients. So how do you solve all of those problems at a wedding so that you can get this kind of a shot that is really different and really cool?

First, we will talk about how we captured the shot, then we will talk about how we made it practical at the wedding.

The first thing you notice with a shot like this (and what many shooters ask us a lot) is that the background must be “photoshopped” in and how did you do it? The answer is honestly, I have no idea how to do something like that in Photoshop and it is all real and all done in the camera. Promise!  There is no retouching done on this shot either with the clients skin, no dodging and burning in Lightroom or Photoshop, and no color enhancements of any type.

How we did it:

Light – The lighting rig is a 500 watt mono light with a 24×32 inch soft box from Westcott. Many shooters will use small light sources like 580 ex speedlights and so on, which are awesome, but unfortunately can’t produce a big light source with a lot of power. And as we talked about earlier, the bigger the light source, the softer and prettier the light. So the 24×32 softbox is big enough to give us pretty light from about 4 to 6 feet away, but small enough that we can throw it in ourcar without breaking it down and can easily move it around attached to the light stand. The whole rig (with our power Vagabond 2 battery pack for power which is made right here in Nashville!) weighs in at about 28 pounds. I use a heavy duty C-Stand which is very stable and has a small footprint so that my light won’t fall on someone’s head. The Vagobond also acts as a sand bag and attaches to the light stand to help hold it down.

Lighting can seem complex, but I use a simple system that gets me shots like this every time. I put the bottom of the box at chin height (of the subject), pick my lighting pattern (in this case straight on glamor lighting), take a meter reading until my meter tells me that I am at a 3 to 1 lighting ration (which takes about 10 seconds), take a shot and then adjust the background to taste with my shutter speed. That may seem complex, but when you know the system and how it works it is like magic!  In our IN-CAMERA: Light workshops we discuss and go through this whole process.

For those wondering about white balance, since we’re using flash, our white balance setting is set to Flash.

Why the shot works:

I create the light on my subject to be a bit more than twice as bright as the sky in the background (which ensures that the sky will have detail in it). When doing these shots I look for some cool sky, but then look to see if there is some really cool dark area (like the trees and ground in this shot) which makes the image naturally contrasty.

The composition on this kind of shot is super important because we have tons of depth in the shot, so if there is something distracting in the background we can’t hide it! The dark trees also make for a nice natural vignette right in the camera. I put the couple in the bottom third of the frame to make it more of an artistic shot that is about the whole scene, and not just the couple. I shot the image from slightly below waist level (and at a wide angle) to give the shot a look of drama and to make the couple look slightly taller than they are.

Something that is incredibly important is to either shoot an image straight or obviously “crooked.”  When an image is SLIGHTLY crooked for no apparent reason it diminished the power the image can have and looks a bit unsettling.  You can even buy grids to put inside your camera so you can get your lines right and not have to fix it later in post. Be a straight shooter!  :)

Speed is also key with shots like this at a wedding and it is not too practical if you can’t do it fast. So we solve that by using our math skills and knowing what lighting ratios will give us the look we want, and then use our light meter to get those ratios. Some people may say that this is too in your face for clients and that all that gear takes away from your rapport with them on the day. Well, that could be true, but in business it is all about how you do business, so if your client feels from you that this is cool and relaxing and fun and how it gets done, then that is how it will be! So leading up to the wedding we do engagement shoots which get them used to how we shoot, and most of our clients come from referrals and have heard about what we do and expect this type of shooting from us (so we better deliver!).

The last thing is that you need to know when to use it, and when NOT to use it. We use it a bit on the day and do a few shots, then put it away when the wedding starts.

The stats:
Canon 5D Mark 2
Canon 16-35L 2 at 16mm
ISO 50, F/8 1/160th of a second shutter speed
Editing time: 5 seconds

Thanks for reading!!

It’s crazy that the workshops we are holding in Jacksonville Beach, FL are less than 2 weeks away and then the next week is Orange County, CA!  We are soooooooo excited to meet all of you and can’t wait!!!

All the seats are almost gone, so if you’re on the fence, make a decision soon!  Come, listen, learn, and DO!

Florida Photography Workshops:
IN-CAMERA: Shooting & Post – (Sunday, Dec 6th) 2 seats left
IN-CAMERA: Light – (Monday, Dec 7th) 1 seat left

Orange County Photography Workshops:
IN-CAMERA: Shooting & Post – (Sunday, Dec 13th) 1 seat left
IN-CAMERA: Light – (Monday, Dec 14th)  Sold Out
IN-CAMERA: Light – (Monday, Dec 15th) 3 seats left

Video by 2Duce2 Videography

Click here for a description on what our workshop classes teach and offer.

Click here to register.

Old and damaged Photo + My Sister = awesomeness

I have to say that my sister is a super talented gal.  All of us girls (I have an older and a younger sister) are creative in our own ways thanks to both of my parents.  I want to take a moment and brag on my older sister, as well as maybe give you some ideas for Christmas shopping!

Introducing my sister Jacq (also know as Jacqueline or Jackie as I called her growing up):

Not only is my sister super organized, and loves photography (must be in the genes, check out this shot my mom took of her when we were little…aw so cute!)…

…but my sister blows me away with her talent at the computer.  Jacq for the past couple of years has worked with a company doing photo restoration and has branched out on her own.  Her work blows me away!!  She can take a water damaged photo, a faded photo, a torn photo – you name it and bring the image back to it’s original state.  It has been crazy seeing the hundreds and hundreds of projects that she has worked on and what she has done.

With a baby on the way (the first grandchild of both sides of our family!  Woo hoo) my sister has moved into freelance and fired up her own business.  So exciting!

For those of you wondering out there what meaningful Christmas gift you can give your parents, grandparents, siblings, or special someone, think about having an image restored & retouched. With technology these days and a skilled person utilizing these tools correctly, it’s amazing what memories can be pulled back and make such a meaningful gift.

Check out a small sample of her work:

Amazing, eh?  Talk about a meaningful Christmas gift for a family member or loved one.

If you’re interested in having any images restored, contact Jacq at JWashburnPR@yahoo.com.  Mention you found her on our blog and receive a free quote.  Contact her by December 5th and receive 15% off!

Watch and be amazed.

What else is there to say except thank-you to Citi Kitty!! We love you more than litter itself! :) And thanks to our cat, Star, for letting us into your private world (and then exploiting you for some laughs).

So this post is for all you out there who love photography, which is hopefully everyone who comes to this blog! :) Today I (Zach) am going to show a few images and talk about a few of the things that we did during the a recent wedding of ours to get the images to look the way they do.

Photography, especially wedding photography, is unique in its own right in that a wedding photographer has to be proficient at many styles of shooting in order to get the job done. We have to know how to do portraits, photojournalism, architectural photography, product photography (for those little rings and details) AND do it all in .5 seconds! It is very difficult to do any of these types of photography well, let alone do them all in one day and shoot 1,200 final images that all rock our clients faces off. Whew!! Not an easy job! Sooooo, today we are going to talk about portraits (I hate that word and if anyone knows a better one, let me know) and a few different techniques in doing them.

Our lovely models today are the amazingly hot Blake and Andrea whose wedding we shot a few weeks back. These guys are the bomb and we love them to death! :)

Image number one!

OK. So I dig this shot a ton that my hot wife took and would like to not only talk about why it rocks, but how we did it.

We were shooting their session on their wedding day about 2.5 hours before sunset which is not the best time in the world to shoot because the sun is still pretty high in the sky. The best time of day to shoot is 1 hour before sunset, and the first hour of the sun rising because the sun is going through more atmosphere which disperses it wider and makes the light softer. The one and only thing that makes light soft and pretty, is the size of the light source. You can diffuse light all you want from any light source, but if the light is not BIG, then it will still be harsh.

So because the light was still pretty harsh we busted out our 5 in 1 reflector, took off the outer reflector which then makes it into a scrim. A scrim simply lets light pass through it, but disperses it out so it gets soft and pretty (and if your couple is standing under a tree then it gets rid of nasty speckled lighting!). Then, here is the big tip, we move that big diffuser of ours as close as we can possibly get it without it being in the frame to get the light source as big as we can which makes the light soft.

So in this shot, our assistant was off to camera right holding the big diffuser. We then had our couple turn about 35 degrees away from the light source (which gives us a loop lighting pattern, or a pattern of light where there is highlights on their camera right side, and some soft shadows on their camera left side). This in turn gives our couple some dimension and helps the shot to not look flat.

So because the background is not diffused and getting direct sunlight, it is going to be lighter than the subjects. This looks great as long as the scene is evenly lit, because our subjects, which are slightly darker, end up getting the attention of your eye because they are the contrasting point of interest.

A couple other elements that bring this shot together:

- Posing:  In guiding our couples during the shoot times, we often tell them to move into each other REALLY close (because close is good for married people and looks great in the shot).

- Composition:  Note where Jody placed the couple in the frame. They are not dead center (which many time makes shots look compositionaly dull) but are off to one side a bit and their eyes are in the top third of the frame which is the dominant part and helps bring your eye right to them.

- Lens Choice:  For this shot, we went with a long lens which compresses the image and helps the shot to feel close and intimate, and also helps throw the background out of focus to keep the attention on our bride and groom.

- White Balance:  The last thing that really makes the shot is that the color is really nice. The color in this image was achieved the way we get all of our color, by doing a custom white balance setting with our Expo Disc. To learn more about this process that will ROCK YOUR WORLD come out to one of our IN-CAMERA Workshops! :)

Image stats:
Canon 5D Mark 2
Canon 70-200L 2.8 IS at 150mm
ISO 200, F/4, 1/400th of a second shutter speed
Editing time: 0.5 seconds

That is it for now! I hope you have enjoyed the shots and seeing the process! We love being able to share so we hope that this post gets you pumped to go out and shoot some awesome images!!  Let us know if you enjoyed this post and we’ll make sure there’s more like it!… Part II might pop up pretty soon and the shot being dissected just might be one with some on-location strobe lighting… Whoo hoo!

For those of you not following us on out Twitter or FaceBook, you might have missed out on the news that we are going on a CRUISE!!!

This year has been super busy and we have been working hard and saving hard and are in need of a long break away from phones, email, internet and work  :)  A time to get away, refresh and revive is exactly what we need, and it doesn’t hurt that the cruise happens to fall over our anniversary!  :)

It all started about two weeks ago when great friends and photographers, David & Tammy Molnar said they were looking into last minute cruises and wondering if we would want to join.  We jumped at the opportunity and booked it that day!

Short of Zach, none of us have ever been on a cruise and are not fully sure what to expect, pack, think about, etc.  My sister and her husband went on a cruise a bit ago and we have some family members who have been as well telling us some things to avoid, things to bring, things to keep in mind, and their help has been invaluable!

For those of you cruisers, we would definitely appreciate some insight if you have it!

A little bit of info about our trip if that will help you with your ideas & suggestions:

Royal Caribbean is the cruise line and we leave from Puerto Rico. Suh weet!

The islands we will be stopping at are:

- Bridgetown, Barbados
- Castries, St. Lucia
- St. John’s, Antigua
- Philipsburg, St. Maarten
- St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Tips and advice are mucho welcome (we obviously don’t speak much Spanish!)! We are so pumped and excited to go!  Yay vacation!

Your dynamic duo Nashville wedding photographers Zach and Jody Gray had the privilege of shooting the super hot Landon & Laila this past weekend! Here are just a few to hold you over until the big reveal and full blog write up on these two hotties!

Can you guess who took what shot? Or did one of us take them both? You may never know…. :)