A One of a Kind Wedding Portrait

Magic Happens When the Right Elements Align at the Right Moment

Diane and Brian got married in Camp Sherman a few falls ago. If I remember correctly Brian did something outdoors, like run a fishing guide service, and did pictures. Many of the people who hire me to be their wedding photographer either do some photography or took a couple photography classes. Then when they’re searching for photographers, they did deeper than the first ten photographers on the Google Search. Because I’m not at the top. It would be nice to be at the top, but I’m not. I remember I film studies class at UC Santa Barbara learning about Spenser Tracy and how he was called an actors actor. I’m kind of the photographers photographer. People who do photography see my work and say, “Oh, here’s a guy who knows the language and art of photography. Let’s contact him.”

And so Brian contacted me and I shot their wedding. It was a nice, small wedding out in Camp Sherman. During the wedding he said how it would be nice to do some pictures with the yellow fall color ferns on the road in to Camp Sherman. Anyone wanting to experiment with ideas always becomes my best friend for wedding photography.

I was surprised to see both Diane and Brian wearing white for their wedding. It’s not too common to see, and I honestly didn’t visualize what the combination of white/white might look like in a portrait out in the ferns. Brian must’ve known something I was missing, because his white shirt actually worked perfectly.

The smoke blowing in from a nearby fire filtered the sunlight and changed it from the normal cool blue to an orange glow. The low hanging sun rays passed through a great deal of smoke and turned a warm amber color. This both softened the highlights and turned the background into a warm painting. Yet the smoke in the trees was so weak, it didn’t show up in the picture.

Finally, I had the Profoto light off to camera right to match the direction of the sun and had the beauty dish with a grid in place to focus the light right on Diane and Brian. For many years the Profoto beauty dish with the grid was my go-to light shaping tool for almost every portrait at every portrait photography event. A year ago I watched a video comparing the beauty dish to a similarly sized octabox. The beauty dish actually makes a bright ring around the edge where the light leaks around the central reflector. It also sucks down about 1.5 extra stops of light. Always using the grid I never noticed the ring of bright light around the edge. However, losing that much light made me switch over to the new pop-up octabox. It really is a game changer because of how fast it deploys and the beautiful light it creates.

The Profoto Changes Reality

This picture might have worked with just natural light. Perhaps with some massive dodging and burning. It looked flat without the light. The added bonus was the Nikon 85mm f1.4 lens I always used for my work. I shot this at f5.6. Look at what that lens could do with contrast and color. It can’t be matched with a zoom lens. The Profoto made quick work of this portrait session. We did the picture and they were on their way within maybe 15 minutes.

So the with clothes, smoky air, yellow ferns, trees in the right spot, the Profoto light, and the right lens all came together to make a magical picture. It now hangs on a wall in the room where I meet people and is a personal favorite. Plus, I would be guilty of malpractice if the magic between the two of them shining through in this picture wasn’t mentioned. I would love to be able to create pictures like this every time, but so many elements coming together at exactly the right time and exactly the right place rarely happens.

I hope they were happy with their pictures and have been happy together.