Bridal Fashion Shoot

This past Monday I had the chance to do a bridal fashion shoot with makeup artist Wendie Lindsay and model Cassidy Baker .  The dress was provided by Queen's Bridal.

 

This was a great opportunity to experiment with lighting styles that I normally don't get to do during an actual wedding.   For most of the indoor shots I used an SB26 (about 1/2 power) on a stand with a shoot-thru umbrella triggered with a Pocket Wizard.

We had originally planned to shoot  at Makawao Union Church which has really beautiful stained glass windows.  However on the day of the shoot, just as we were about to begin we learned that there was a wedding scheduled at the church later that morning.  We were able to get a couple of shots done, but then went to a second church to continue shooting so as to not interfere with the wedding.

Canon 5D 24-70 iso 400 1/30@ f5.6

I really liked the light from the shoot-thru umbrella. We positioned it far to the right so that the light would skim across the front and bring out the detail of the dress.

 

Canon 5D 24-70 iso 400 1/30@ f5.6

At our second location down the road at Holy Rosary Church, we were able to take a little more time and get some very different looks.

One of the things I always wanted to try was ground-posing the bride.  Since we had to be very careful with the way we handled the dress, I spread out a white towel and had Cassidy position herself on it.  We then tucked the edges of the towel in so that we wouldn't see it.

Canon 5D 70-200 iso 400 1/2500@ f2.8

The light was really nice in this spot, so no reflector or flash was needed.  I used a 70-200 lens wide open to blur the background out as much as I could (her feet are practically touching the flower bed behind her).

From there we had her move into a seated pose on the towel and shot from above with the 70-200 lens. I had to stand on a chair to get the angle.  (Sucks being a short photographer)

Canon 5D 70-200 iso 400 1/1250@ f2.8

We also took a few shots with the veil before changing up the look.

Canon 5D 70-200 iso 400 1/1600@ f2.8

Behind the scenes as Wendie adjusts Cassidy's makeup.

Canon 5D 70-200 iso 400 1/1000@ f2.8

Shot from above using a chair.  Natural light only.  Used the 70-200 lens for a lot of these shots.  Don't have the IS version, so these were all done with a tripod.

Canon 5D 70-200 iso 400 1/1250@ f2.8

We tried a few shots here with Wendie holding the dress up and releasing it to try to add some motion, but in the end the best look was when the breeze did it naturally.

Towards the end of the shoot, I wanted to try some dramatic lighting. We went over to the shaded side of the church and setup 2 SB26s @ 1/2 power on lightstands (no umbrellas). One was positioned in the raised flower bed to the left and the other was setup behind Cassidy. Took several attempts before we got the light looking right.

Canon 5D 28-70 iso 400 1/200@ f16

Those little SB26s really put out a lot of light.  Even at 1/2 power it was starting to overpower the daylight and darken the sky a little.

Canon 5D 28-70 iso 400 1/200@ f16

At one point, Cassidy shifted her pose and I accidentally caught the flare from the rear SB26. I liked the effect, though.

This was a fun shoot.  Got to experiment with a few new ideas that I'll try to incorporate into future weddings.