A week ago I posted this image on Facebook along with an announcement that Elizabeth & Michael’s wedding images could be seen on my blog.  Over the next few days emails poured in from other photographers asking many different questions regarding how I made this image.  I’ve decided to share, here on The Pro Spot, the techniques I used creating this image.

I want to start by saying I saw this image in my mind’s eye before I ever placed this beautiful bride into position.  When I entered the magnificent Garden City Hotel on Long Island my eye immediately went across the lobby to where I saw a wedding gown on display in one of the windows of the myriad boutiques in this world class hotel.  I knew right away that I would be posing my bride there for this fashion style image.  I wanted to isolate the bridal gown display from the other displays adjacent to it and eliminate, as much as possible, the handrail on the right side of the frame.  I chose a Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 lens for my Nikon D3 camera and positioned myself at a relatively long distance to my subject.  The narrow angle of view enabled me to crop the image tight and the long focal length made it easier to keep the vertical lines in the picture straight.  When shooting straight into vertical lines (like the ornate frame around this window display) make sure that your camera height is as close to bisecting the vertical plane of the image as possible.  This will keep the vertical lines in the picture straight with no skewing inward or outward.

A quick meter reading gave me the proper exposure for the illuminated background of this image.  Then a single Lowel iD video light was used to illuminate my subject.  There are many different video lights on the market but the Lowel iD light is the most diverse of the offerings giving me three distinct ways to adjust light output to match the ambient light in the scene.  For starters the light has an infinitely adjustable dimmer to dial in the right amount of light to match the ambient exposure.  The light also has the ability to focus from a wide flood pattern to a more intense concentrated spot.  Finally the light output can be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the distance of the light to the subject.  True, there are LED based lights on the market that offer a more compact, convenient solution but none of those lights can match the quality, consistency and flexibility of the Lowel iD light.

My assistant positioned herself 90 degrees off camera to the right, focusing the light in a tight spot illuminating the bride’s face and the top half of her gown.  I had her dial the light output up to where it was just the right intensity.  The bride’s face was turned towards the light to avoid any unsightly shadows on her face.  Keeping the bride’s dress perpendicular to the light source insured that all of the detail of her gown would come out.  The manual exposure was 1/50th second at  f3.2 with my ISO set at 800.  The vibration reduction feature in the lens enabled me to confidently hand hold this shot with this long, heavy telephoto zoom lens at a relatively slow shutter speed.  Only some minor editing was done in Photoshop to remove a few distracting reflections in the glass and to burn down the lower left corner of the image.