So here’s one of the key images captured, this one from the top entrance to the amphitheater with the “stairway to heaven” rock (it’s official name is Creation Rock I believe) in the background.

This image is just about SOOC – straight out of camera – This was all done in camera with lighting – not photoshop.

So first of all one of the key things was time of day.   The shoot was late October and I knew I’d want to catch the setting sun so we planned on meeting around 3-3:30, taking care of the dog and engagement shots first, then changing to the dress and hitting these shots with the setting sun.   This shot was take at 4:40 in the afternoon.

What I really liked about this time of day was the fact that the upper rock was still bathed in sunlight, but the rest of the upper deck was in shadow.  This served two critical issues.

1) It allowed me to use a studio light on the bride, bright enough so I could underexpose the sky just enough to get that dramatic blue and have her pop out of the darkness on the lower frame.

2) Since the park wasn’t closed and we didn’t have exclusive access to the area, there are tourists wandering in the background of the shot.   However they are in such shadow compared to the sunlight on the rock, and the light on my bride, that they just disappear.   If that shade hadn’t of been there I’d have had to wait for several minutes to get the least amount of foot traffic behind her and then still spend a huge amount of time photoshopping out the rest .

Equipment used for the shot

Alien Bee B1600 Studio light and battery pack

2 Pocket Wizards Plus II

Canon 5DmkII

Canon 24-105mm L lens

For this setup it was vital to shoot manual exposure and manual flash – so nothing fancy with Canon flash and ETTL – sometimes that fancy stuff works nice, but when shooting a white dress against a dark background and an underexposed sky – it wouldn’t be predictable.   Odds are good every shot would have had different lighting.

So the first thing was to figure out proper exposure on the sky and upper rock at ISO 100 and 1/160 (for manual flash sync).   Normal exposure came out around F8 to F9  so  I set the camera to F11 and confirmed that the sky and rock where nicely underexposed just enough to over saturate them naturally – and all the rest was in shadow – including all those wondering tourists.

Then it was just a matter of dialing in the studio light to F11 and getting the proper angle for a little drama in the shot.   I’d say it took less than 5 minutes to dial this in and from then on out – every shot just rocked in camera.

Another thing if you’re doing something outside with a wedding dress BEFORE the wedding.  Obviously we didn’t want to get it too dirty – but this place is covered in reddish dirt and dust.   Under the bride is a bedsheet that is pretty close to the same shade of white as her dress.   The sheet was laid out first for the bride, dress hiked up, to come over and stand on.  Once the skirt was placed how we wanted the excess sheet was tucked under the skirt.   You can just make it out on the far edge.   For the final canvas prints this would be clean up in photoshop just a touch.

Here’s one more wide angle shot showing the light and bride in another location down by the parking lots.

I had the pleasure of spending some time with Becker a few years back when I was still working on how to grow my wedding business and found the day very informative and looked forward to chance to meet up with him again.

The only downside might have been the speed in which Becker had to run through the presentation – I don’t know if he took more than a few breaths during the next 90 minutes.   He had to rush it a bit since the photographers where off to the second big event of the night.

Anna Be: Five

One of Denver’s finest bridal boutique’s Anna Be is one of the must visit places for brides dress shopping, and their 5 anniversary celebration was also this night, and do these people know how to throw a party.

One of my favorite parts of this party for myself was the fact that bamboo booth was on site with their photo booth. It’s a known fact that I’m a photo booth junkie and add to the mix lots of other photographers to pose with and I’m all in.

My favorite part is in part 3 where Joe talks about his passion for wedding photography and how the photographers heart and soul shapes his vision.

With the three brides coming in as models for the day I had a great chance to try the infrared both under outdoors in sun, shade and inside to see how the new sensor filter would react.

The best results where clearly from the outside shots, and those with more sunlight where much more striking than those in open shade.

Lisa with old truck in direct sun.

Lisa against building - open shade

One thing you may have noticed is the eyes tend to go very dark, it’s a result of by comparison the skin reflects most infrared light where the eyes don’t.  This won’t be the best choice of cameras for tight portraits with the subject looking directly into the lens.

But a slight profile can be excellent.

I love this set of images with Jodi in the workroom with the window light.   The slight toning of the image seems to work well with a lot of these shots as well.

One of my favorite infrared shots of the day was Jodi out front, the ivy on the walls is really standing out, a bit of sun flare, some toning and a whole lot of attitude.

Check back on Tuesday for some of the normal shots from the day.

So if lenses are brushes then I guess the camera body is akin to the paint palette, again a fairly good analogy since different bodies and sensors tend to record colors and contrast just a bit differently from each other.

In this case my latest addition to the tool collection is a palette, and quite an unusual one at that.

See a few years ago I purchased a Canon consumer body, strictly to keep on hand as an emergency backup. While my wife has use the camera a time or two, it really hasn’t seen much use and since I’ve upgraded other bodies it became the 3rd or even 4th line of backup camera in case of emergency.

I figured there was something more unique I could do with this so I packed it up and sent it off to a speciality shop that would open it up, and replace a few parts, and return it to me – as a full time infrared camera.

So an infrared camera doesn’t see in the dark, what it does is capture reflected infrared light – which is a different spectrum than what cameras normally capture. Most cameras even have a filter to block infrared light so it doesn’t have any impact on focusing – the filters that did this are among those removed by the operation.

When processed as a b&w image all the greens tend to become white – most plants being highly reflective to the infrared spectrum, and things like blue skies go nearly black.

Over the last week or two as I’ve played with this I’ve taken it out to the countryside, photographed the church downtown next door to my studio, and took it on a wedding up to Dunafon Castle.

While this won’t become a frequent “palette” at most weddings I think it might make it out from time to time on those amazing outdoor venues we have here in Colorado.