I recently undertook round two of our Wedding Invite Photo Shoot. Although round one was pretty successful, trying again has been on my to-do list for awhile. I'm still not sure exactly how these images will work into the final product of our save-the-dates and wedding invites, but they're nice to have around just in case. I'm definitely excited about the possibilities.
It took me so long to get around to round two because I was so happy with what I conceived for round one that I was unsure if I could come up with any new ideas. The process of round two seemed to go better than the first. The first time I relied heavily on my iPhone and Hipstamatic app to produce cool images. This time around it was all me. I set the camera to manual focus and took a lot of time getting things positioned to exactly where I wanted them to be. Those are the good things that happened.
I thought the shoot was a success until I uploaded the photos and saw what I came up with on the big screen. The lighting seemed wrong. I didn't diffuse any of the lights pointed at the set because, to my eye, it looked soft. But the hard copy proved otherwise. The light was harsh and all of the wood tones in the props had orangey glow. Maybe I should have reduced the number of lights. Maybe I should have turned off all the overhead lights in the room to control the ambient light bouncing off surfaces. Maybe I should have diffused the light. I don't know. Additionally, John's ring was so shiny that it was difficult to find photos without my reflection, something I hadn't contemplated when shooting. I also could have used a tripod, something I don't currently own. Trial and error.
I'm happy with the images that I eventually got but - a lot of the originals were unusable. And the ones that survived required more editing than I'm comfortable with. Live and learn, I guess. I'll have to do more research, keep trying to figure out that dang lighting.
View the full set on my Flickr. Additional photos from the shoot after the jump.
