Understanding Natural Light Part 3: Direction of Light

A Post By: Oded Wagenstein

In this third chapter, you will learn:

• How to control the direction of natural light in the field.
• How to understand the different effects the direction of light will have on your portraits. How to mix light colors to create depth.
• A few advanced techniques, like using reflectors or flags.
• How to practice using exercises.

Please note that as a portrait photographer, I will be discussing portraits, and using them as examples. However, this knowledge applies to any kind of photography.

Working with natural light does not mean compromising

Most people will tell you that while working with artificial lighting will allow you to fully control the lighting situation in your shooting, working exclusively with natural light will limit your ability to control the lighting to almost zero. In my opinion, this false assumption is leading many photographers to mediocre images. Stating that the lighting is poor, because “that’s how it was” when they made the photo, is not acceptable.

So, the first step in controlling natural light is to carefully plan your time of the shoot. In the preview articles, we have discussed how the quality and color of light are affected by time, and weather, during the day. Now, let’s understand how the direction of light will change throughout the day, and how it will affect the lighting situation in our portraits.

Frontal lighting

Frontal lighting refers to light which comes directly in front of your subject (the light source is behind you and the camera). The situation is possible or when your subject is facing the light source (for example face directed to a setting or a rising sun). Another possibility is with reflected light. Like in this image, Dialsiz was standing in the shade, but in front of her was a bright sunny wall, reflecting the sunlight directly on her face.

Pros: Frontal lighting will usually illuminate your subject’s face evenly, without any shadows. It will create an aesthetic and balanced look, which is why this setup is very popular in fashion and beauty shoots.

Cons: The lack of shadows will create a lack and depth and drama.

45 degree lighting

As the name suggests, this refers to a situation where the light comes from an angle of 45 degrees from the nose of your subject. This is extremely popular lighting setup in portrait photography, which is sometimes called Rembrandt lighting. It can be easily achievable with side light coming from a rising or setting sun, or by positioning your subject at a 45 degree angle to a window.

Pros: in this lighting setup, you will note how the light illuminates your subject’s face gradually. Creating a gradual shadow, and in our two dimensional art form, shadows usually mean depth and volume. That is the reason this setup is so appealing in the eyes of most viewers.

Cons: The dramatic effect of shadowing parts of the subject’s face might not be suitable for your visual story.

90 degree lighting

As the name suggests, this refers to a situation where the light comes from an angle of 90 degrees from the nose of your subject. It can be achievable with side light coming from a rising or a setting sun or by positioning your subject at a 90 degree angle to a window.

Pros: Extremely dramatic effect, which is almost impossible to ignore.

Cons: This dramatic lighting setup can be a little over dramatic, and with the right subject, this lighting can be scary! It all depends of course, on what you want to evoke in your visual story.

Backlighting

This refers to a situation where the light comes from behind your subject, and in front of you.

Pros: Backlight will create highlights in the contours of your subject, and unlike with frontal lighting, this will create a sense of depth, and a clear separation between the subject and the background. Unless the light source is very dim and fully covered by your subject’s body, working with backlight will force you to be creating with your photography, as it will make the exposure a bit more difficult. This is where switching from the automatic mode can be handy. While overexposing can be good for creating a burned out background or a lens flare, underexposure will usually result in a nice silhouette (as above)

Cons: As mentioned, this one is a bit more advanced to handle, and will mostly require switching out of your camera’s automatic mode, but again, a great opportunity for some creative photography.

Light from above

This refers to a situation where the light comes from directly above your subject, like during midday.

Pros: This interrogation room style lighting setup will not be flattering to most faces. Light coming from above will result in deep shadows on your subject’s face, making the forehead shadow the eyes, and making the nose shadow the chin. However, it can be used as a way of creating a very dramatic image. Oscar-winning Cinematographer Gordon Hugh Willis, did a groundbreaking work in Francis Ford Coppola’s movie, The Godfather, with the combination of underexposing and positioning the lighting source above the actors’ faces. He managed to support the dark and mysterious sense of this movie, with the audience was unable to see most eyes throughout the movie.

Cons: As mentioned, when handled right, this lighting setup, can lead to great and creative results. Otherwise, you subject will look like he or she is going to answer some tough questions.

Controlling natural light

Basic: in the simplest form, controlling natural light is first in the planning. Choose the right time to be outside, or take your subject indoors to use the soft light coming from a window.

Advanced: You can control natural light almost like controlling artificial lighting, with the help of reflectors or/and flags.

Reflectors are used to bounce light into the subject’s face. For example, if you are dealing with light coming from above, you can overcome the problem of dark eyes by illumining them using a reflector. It can also lighten the dark side of the face, if needed, in the case of lighting from a 45 or 90 degree angle.

You can see the reflection of the reflector used to bounce light back into this man’s face.

A flag is usually a piece of black fabric that can be used to block unwanted light and create shadows (shadows mean a sense of depth remember?) on the subject’s face. To use a flag properly, you will need somebody or something that can hold it. That is the way I use all kind of flags in the field. I have used my hat (which I was holding in my left hand) to shadow an overexposed forehead numerous times, or using the help of an innocent bystander that was asked to stand in one spot for a moment, to create a shadow when needed.

8 Tips to Stay Motivated and Inspired by Your Photography

A Post By: Anthony Epes

Taking photos is one of the most inspiring and exciting of pursuits. It can encourage you to have adventures, see the world in a newer, fresher way, meet interesting people – all while creating something that is totally unique to you.

“We are born makers, and creativity is the ultimate act of integration – it is how we fold our experiences into our being.” – Brene Brown

But what happens when your well of inspiration runs dry, when you can’t get excited by your images or you feel stuck in a rut? Most photographers, even professionals, have periods when creating feels like wading through glue. You get tired or bored with your own images.

So, why do you (we all) get stuck?

The destructive habit of habit

As most of us, you are probably immersed in habit – you do almost the same things each day, every day. Making your coffee in the same way at the same time, going to work on the same route at the same time, eating the same kind of food each evening. It’s almost like you stop thinking and just do.

“As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge” – Henry van Dyke

Your brain has made a great effort to get you into the state of habit. It makes life easier for you so that you don’t have to make tonnes of new decisions every day. But, if you are lost in habit you aren’t seeing new things, doing new things, or trying things in new ways. Habit will strangle your creativity.

So how do you get out of this cycle?

The way to fill your life with inspiration and motivation will be different than others – depending on how you create and what drives you. Here are some ideas:

1 – Leave your camera at home

If you’re someone who is always out and about with your camera, taking lots of photos – abandon it for a while. It’s easy to get carried away. Instead of taking time to see and compose, you are likely just taking shot, after shot, after shot. If you are bored with the photos you are taking – this is probably what’s happening to you.

I would encourage you to start examining the world in a different way – not as a photographer, but as someone who hears, feels, smells, and absorbs the atmosphere around you. Using all of your senses is a wonderful way to help experience the same world, but in a different way. It will help you gain a different perspective.

Sound is a particularly evocative sense for me – the crackle of dry autumn leaves under my feet, the low hum of trains on a railway line in the distance behind me, the vibrating thump of music in a bar, a conversation drifting past me. Tuning in to senses that you usually don’t prioritize (because we photo lovers tend to put our sight first, don’t we) will also help you anchor yourself into the present moment, pulling you away from your busy mind, and into the world so you can eventually see more interesting and unique things.

Challenge: When you are ready to start taking photos again, set yourself the challenge of taking just three photos a day, for 15 days. If this sounds hard, then it’s the perfect challenge! This will help you be more precise and thoughtful in your approach. You will work harder to create a smaller number of better photos. So – what will you take with your three images?

2 – Make taking photos a habit

Now, let’s consider the reverse. You are someone who doesn’t take photos very often – maybe you wait for an occasion like a walk in a lovely area, good light, or a holiday – then my advice is the opposite. If photography is something that you pick up only now and again, you’ll never get into the rhythm of creating, you’ll never develop the skills of really seeing the world and composing great images. The act of creating is like a muscle – the more you do it the stronger it becomes.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou

By creating a habit of creating, you are making a declaration to yourself that photography is a very important part of your life. It also helps to get your subconscious organized in a way that it knows you are going to be calling on it more regularly. It starts preparing. I know this sounds strange but it’s like anything you do regularly, your body and your mind get used to doing it. You are in the mood and the wonderful act of creativity starts to energize you in new and exciting ways.

Challenge: If getting into the habit of taking photos is tough for you, then this is the challenge for you – take 50 photos every day, for 15 days. That will kick start your creativity, and imbue your day with the looking and seeing and noticing that is necessary to take great photos.

3 – Take photos not to see the result, but to enjoy the process

When you see small children making art there is a beautiful joy that they get by just doing it. From feeling the feathers before they glue them on an egg box, to painting wild splashes of colour on a sheet of white paper. In fact going out with kids, and watching them look at the world in such an open way, is great training on how to be present with the world around you.

With kids there is a complete enjoyment in the process of making – and that is something we, as photographers, sometimes forget. Perhaps because the act of creating is so instant – the click – we forget that it’s our whole creative process which leads up to that click.

“What moves me about… what’s called technique…is that it comes from some mysterious deep place. I mean it can have something to do with the paper and the developer and all that stuff, but it comes mostly from some very deep choices somebody has made that take a long time and keep haunting them.” – Diane Arbus

I do my best work when I am totally present, totally in the zone, not thinking about emails, or jobs, my to-do list, or my kids – but looking with wonder at a beautiful cloud, or some rain dripping off of a leaf. And if you need encouragement – isn’t it just great to cut yourself off from all of your responsibilities and absorb yourself in the wildness, the peace, the craziness, the beauty of the world?

4 – Start a project

Sometimes I find my attention gets fragmented – with all of the work I do, my family, etc., so that I’m jumping from task to task, and not getting deeply involved in anything. A few photos here, a few photos there. This is when I like to jump into a project.

Key advice for projects: Choose a subject that you are blown-away passionate about. It could be anything – the colour violet, armpits, salt mines, trees, your kids, men with mohawks – it doesn’t matter what it is, you can bring something new to a subject if you make the effort.

“I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in forty years about photography. Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life – to show that (the success of) my photographs (was) not due to subject matter – not to special trees or faces, or interiors, to special privileges – clouds were there for everyone…” Alfred Stieglitz

The key point is that it’s not so much about technique, but the passion. Why? Because:

• When you hit a roadblock or life distracts you, you’ll be less likely to abandon the project if you are really excited about it.
• Passion will help drive you to create a new and interesting perspective on your subject.
• When you feel something when you are taking photos, you are more likely to take a photo that contains feelings. Why is that important? Because you want people to notice your photo, to feel a connection with it. Most images we look at are flat and devoid of feeling. The best photos communicate both a visual idea and a feeling, we are moved in some way by it.

“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” – Don McCullin

5 – Do something completely different

I’ve talked about how habit can be a force of good for your photography – by making you commit to a regular practice, and exercise that creativity muscle. But it can also be a negative force – you get so used to your ways of doing things, or your lifestyle, that you don’t push yourself in new ways.

Think about the kind of things you normally photograph. Now think of some you’d be terrified to photograph, and go and photograph them. So maybe you’re great at landscapes. You like photographing the odd person if they happen to be in the shot. But the idea of taking a close-up or a portrait of them terrifies you. So do that. Or you’ve always wanted to get up onto some rooftops and photograph your city from up high. But the idea of asking for permission, etc., makes you feel nervous. Just go for it!

“You may never know exactly what you need to do, or exactly where you’re going. But if you are willing to start taking tiny steps, and keep going, the dots will connect over time to create something beautiful and fulfilling.” – Lori Deschene

6 – Remind yourself why you take photos

It can be easy with your photography to get into that should way of thinking – “I should take more photos! I should be better!” But scolding yourself rarely gets you anywhere (with anything). Instead, I encourage you to think about what photography really means to you, what are the benefits beyond the fun of taking that photo. How does it enrich, energize and enhance your life?

Ask yourself:

• What does photography give me?
• How do I want to be creative in my every day?
• Which of my photos or projects am I really proud of?

When you connect with the reasons why you do things, it’s so much easier to stay committed and motivated.

7 – The trap of perfectionism

Often we stop taking photos, or we start slowing down or moving off on a tangent when we are working on a project, because the feeling of not being good enough starts to insidiously infect us.

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life” – Anne Lamott

Who cares if you try things that don’t work. Who cares if some of your photos aren’t great? Stopping yourself from doing something you love, before you’ve done it, is crazy. Recognize you have the fear, but don’t let that stop you. Fear goes away eventually.

Be aimless and wander. Resist those urges to make your photo explorations productive. Ignore the output and focus instead on what you see. Listen. Follow things that spark your interest.

8 – Get inspiration – indirectly

I really believe that inspiration for your photos can come from all kinds of places. It just so happens that my favourite photographer of all time, Ernst Haas, agrees (if you don’t know him,look him up). He said:

“Beware of direct inspiration. It leads too quickly to repetitions of what inspired you… Refine your senses through the great masters of music, painting, and poetry. In short, try indirect inspirations, and everything will come by itself.”

So fill your life with creative inspiration of anything that moves you. Beautiful music, looking at bizarre paintings, reading wild adventure books – it doesn’t matter what it is, if it excites and moves you then it’s right for you. The more you remind yourself what feeling excited and creative feels like, the more your body and mind will imprint that into yourself.

Along that vein, I also like to remind myself of times when I have felt super creative, super in the flow, and I was taking great photos. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you’ll never take a good photo ever again (happens to me all the time, especially when I am starting a new book), but just think back to a time when you were taking great photos and in the zone. Remind yourself of that, and it will be easier to get back into that space.

I hope those ideas help. I’d love to know if they do – and what you do when you get stuck. Comment below, I’d love to hear.

How to Use the Local Adjustments Tools Inside Lightroom

A Post By: Andrew S. Gibson

Whenever you take a photo, no matter what the subject, it would be extremely unusual if it couldn’t be improved in some way by making local adjustments in Lightroom.

Local adjustments affect part of the image. Whenever you carry out any processing action in Lightroom you are either making a local adjustment (only affects part of the image) or a global adjustment (affects the entire image).

If you have been following this series and trying out some of the techniques I wrote about in myearlier Lightroom articles that you have been mainly making global adjustments. There is an exception. Adding a vignette in the Effects panel is a local adjustment because it affects the edges of the image but not the centre.

Lightroom gives you three powerful tools for making local adjustments. They are the Adjustment Brush, the Graduated filter, and Radial filter.

The Adjustment Brush

The Adjustment Brush is for creating an odd shaped mask – one that can’t be made easily with the Graduated or Radial filters.

Note that masks work differently in Lightroom than in Photoshop. In Photoshop, the adjustment is applied to the area that isn’t covered by the mask. In Lightroom, the adjustment is applied to the area covered by the mask.

Creating a mask in Lightroom is the same as making a selection in Photoshop. Go to the Develop module and click the Adjustment Brush icon (marked on the right) or use the keyboard shortcut K.

The Adjustment Brush panel opens up underneath the icon. The first 14 sliders show the adjustments you can make with this tool. The Effect menu contains a number of presets that you can use (click the word “Custom” to see the pull-down menu).

At the bottom (circled) are sliders for setting the size, softness and strength of the Adjustment Brush.

To start, select Brush A (if not already selected) and use the [ and ] keys to make the brush smaller or larger respectively, until it is the right size to create the mask you need. You can also use the Size slider, but the keyboard shortcuts are easiest.

Hold down the Shift key and use the [ or ] to adjust the amount of feathering. Again, you can use the Feather slider but the keyboard shortcuts are faster once you get to know them.

The size of the Adjustment Brush is shown by two concentric circles on the screen. The inner circle shows the area fully covered by the brush. The outer circle shows more or less where the effect of feathering ends. The distance between the circles increases when you increase the feathering amount. This diagram shows how it looks on screen.

You can create another Adjustment Brush by clicking on B and changing the parameters. You can switch between the A and B brushes whenever you like, useful for complex retouching.

Select Erase to delete part of the mask that you have created. You can adjust the size and feathering of the Erase brush as well.

Flow controls the opacity of the mask. 100 is full strength. Set it here unless you have a reason to do otherwise.

Density sets the maximum strength of the effect.

The difference between Density and Flow is this. If you set Flow to 25% and repeatedly brush over part of the image, each brush mark builds on the one below it, increasing the strength of the effect until you reach 100%. If you set Density to 50%, and flow to 25%, then repeatedly brush, the maximum strength you can reach is 50%.

This diagram shows the difference. On the left I set the Exposure slider to +4.00, Flow to 25%, Density to 50% and brushed repeatedly. On the right I did the same with Density set to 100%.

Tick the Auto Mask box to limit the edges of the mask to any edges in the photo. Sometimes this tool works well, but other times it reacts to textures and creates a patchy mask that doesn’t cover the area you want. I leave this unticked most of the time.

You can add as many Adjustment Brushes to an image as you like. Each one is represented by a grey dot that is revealed when you select the Adjustment brush tool and move the mouse over the photo. The current Adjustment Brush is marked by a black circle within the grey pin. Click on a grey dot to activate that adjustment and make changes to it, or delete it (press the Backspace key).

Now, let’s put that into practice. I’d like to do two things to the photo below. One is reduce the intensity of the highlights created by the lights inside the church; the second is emphasize the texture of the stone. We can do both with the Adjustment Brush.

First, I brushed in the areas affected by the bright highlights (shown in green below).

You can see the area covered by the Adjustment Brush at any time by pressing the O key.

This is called the Mask Overlay and is coloured green in my screen shots. The default colour is red. Press the Shift and O keys together to change it. Press O again to hide the Mask Overlay.

Then I moved the Highlights slider left (to -67) to reduce the intensity of the highlights. These screen shots show the difference.

Next, I created a new mask covering the stonework.

Then I increased Clarity to +58 to bring out the texture of the stone wall.

Here’s the final result, compared to the original.

Here are some more uses for the Adjustment Brush:

• Portrait retouching. Use the Adjustment Brush to select the model’s skin and apply the Soften Skin preset. You can also enhance eyes by increasing exposure and Clarity.

• Enhancing black and white photos. Many black and white images rely heavily on texture for impact. Use the Adjustment Brush to select the textured areas you would like to have the most impact, and increase Clarity to enhance them.

• Selectively desaturating the background to add impact to portraits.

My article, Four Ways to Improve your Photos with the Clarity Slider in Lightroom, shows you how to do it.

The Graduated filter

Lightroom’s Graduated filter is named after the type of filter used by landscape photographersto make skies darker.

This is also the most obvious use for Lightroom’s Graduated filter. However, it only works if detail was recorded in the sky. it doesn’t replace a physical graduated neutral density filter.

Go to the Develop module and click the Graduated filter icon (marked right), or click the keyboard shortcut – M. The Graduated filter panel opens, revealing the same sliders as the Adjustment Brush.

Click and hold the left mouse button down, and pull the mouse down over the image. Lightroom adds a Graduated filter to the photo.

The Graduated filter is marked by three lines that move further apart as you move the mouse across the photo. The lines represent the softness of the filter – the further they are apart, the more graduation you get.

Let go of the mouse button to place the filter. If you do so close to the edge of the photo, you will create a filter with three lines close together. This is a hard filter, with a rapid graduation between full effect and no effect.

If you hold the mouse button down for longer, you get a filter with three lines spaced far apart. This is a soft filter, with a gentle graduation between full effect and no effect.

The two types of filter are shown below. I pressed the O key to show the Mask Overlay (you can only do this in Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC).

After creating the filter, you can move it by clicking and dragging the central pin.

If you hold the Shift key down while creating the filter, it is placed parallel to the edge that you started from.

To rotate the filter, hold the mouse over the central line (the one with the pin) until the cursor changes from a plus sign to a curly double arrow. Hold the left mouse button down and move the mouse to rotate the filter.

To change the softness of the filter, hold the mouse over the outer line until the cursor changes to a hand. Click and drag to move the line closer to, or further from, the central line. If you hold the Alt key down while you do so, the central line stays in position.

The best way to come to grips with this is to try it out. It may sound complex, but it’s quite simple, and you’ll quickly get the hang of it.

Here’s an example of how you can use the Graduated filter to improve an image. The water behind these boats is very bright, and I wanted to make it darker to fit in with the foreground. The Graduated filter is the perfect tool for this. Before and After photos shown below.

In Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC you can combine the Graduated filter with the Adjustment Brush. The Adjustment Brush is used to alter the shape of the mask created by the Graduated filter.

In this example, I used the Graduated filter to darken the sky. The only problem is that the Graduated Filter also makes the palm tree darker, which I don’t want. Here’s the Mask Overlay (shown in red).

Press O to show the Mask Overlay, then click on the word Brush in the Graduated filter panel (marked below). The Brush options open up below the panel. Click Erase (also marked below) and adjust the size (and other settings) to suit.

Here’s what the Mask Overlay looks like with the part that covers the palm tree erased.

Here are the before and after versions.

Before (left) showing the graduated filter to darken the sky. After (right) showing the tree portion having been erased or masked out from being darkened by the graduated filter.

My article Improve Your Images with the Lightroom Graduated Filter Tool shows you six ways you can use the Graduated filter to improve your photos.

The Radial filter

The Radial filter (new in Lightroom 5) is for creating circle or oval shaped masks. If you have Lightroom 6 or Lightroom CC you can press O to show the Mask Overlay. You can also combine the Radial filter with the Adjustment Brush.

Go to the Develop module and click the Radial filter icon (marked right). The Radial filter panel opens. The sliders are the same as those used by the Graduated filter and the Adjustment Brush.

Hold the left mouse button down and drag the mouse across the photo. Let the mouse button go when you are done.

Change the size and shape of the Radial filter by clicking and dragging the four white squares at the compass points of the filter.

Rotate the Radial filter by moving the cursor to the edge of the filter until it changes from a hand or plus icon to a double curly arrow. Click and drag to rotate.

Use the Feather slider to set the softness of the gradient at the edges of the Radial filter. The default setting of 50 seems to work well for most masks, but you can change it if you need to.

By default Lightroom applies the adjustments to the area outside the Radial filter. Tick the Invert Mask box to apply the adjustments to the area inside it instead.

The screenshot below shows a Radial filter that I placed on photo used in the previous demonstration. I ticked the Invert Mask box to apply the adjustment to the area inside the Radial filter. The Mask Overlay is on to show you the affected area (in red).

Then I increased Exposure to bring out some detail in the palm tree. Before and after versions below.

Here are some uses for the Radial filter:

• Portrait retouching. Select eyes or lips and enhance using exposure and Clarity sliders.
• Making portrait backgrounds darker. Place a Radial filter over the model’s face and make the background darker.
• Add a vignette to off-centre subjects. When you create a vignette in the Effects panel, it is always centred. With the Radial filter, you can place it wherever you need.

In my next article I’ll show you how to harness the power of Lightroom using Virtual Copies. Until then, if you have any questions about the techniques in this article, or you would like to share how you use local adjustments in Lightroom, please let us know in the comments.

Posing Guide: 21 Sample Poses to Get You Started with Photographing Weddings

1. The wedding veil is a superb accessory for a bride’s close-up portrait. You may want to use manual zoom to focus on the eyes, otherwise the auto mode will focus on the veil’s texture.

2. A very good opportunity for a great picture is photographing the bride or both newlyweds in the wedding car.

3. The romantic and passionate kiss is another must-have shot from the event. Definitely try to capture both faces including the eyes. Without that you will probably produce a dull shot.

4. Very easy and kind pose. The newlyweds simply and naturally embrace while bringing their cheeks together. Take care that the bridal bouquet is nicely placed and turned towards the camera.

5. Another beautiful pose with the groom embracing the bride from the back. The newlyweds may look romantically at each other or straight to the camera. Or they might kiss for an even more affectionate pose.

6. Just a slight variation of the previous ones, keep the newlyweds close together, but find a way to get a shot from an elevated angle.

7. In weddings you can’t really go wrong by asking the newly weds to kiss for a shot whenever there is an appropriate moment. They won’t complain anyway!

8. If possible, arrange an outdoor shot, take some pictures of the couple from a distance and use some open space in a background.

9. Absolutely easy and a bit more formal pose, creates a calm and intimate mood.

10. The groom holding the bride in arms, easy to pose, however be careful choosing the right shooting angle – both faces should be visible.

11. A pose with the groom holding the bride works not only from a distance, but makes a very nice pose for a close-up as well.

12. Certainly a staged pose – the bride falling into the groom’s hands. But if the newly weds are responsive, poses like that could work out extremely well.

13. Weddings don’t need to be and sometimes really aren’t at all that serious. Don’t be afraid to make some fun, ask the newly weds to loose their shoes and just run around a bit and snap some frames.

14. Never forget that there often are good opportunities shooting from the back.

15. A fun pose with the newlyweds kissing passionately. Pay attention to the wedding dress: It shall look free-falling and natural, as opposed to stuck and creased under the groom’s leg.

16. A gorgeous pose for a bride’s portrait. The bride should sit on the ground (or a very low stool) with the wedding dress nicely arranged around her. Shoot from above with the bride looking slightly upwards.

17. Fun and simple pose, the newlyweds clinking champagne glasses. For a more creative shot you could get real close and focus on the glasses, leaving the portraits blurred.

18. Another creative way to play with a shallow depth of field. Use the widest possible aperture and keep the groom in a distance from the bride. Focus on the bride, leaving him slightly out of focus.

19. The newlyweds dancing is just another must-have shot. Take pictures with the bride and groom facing towards the camera, making both faces clearly visible. They may look to the camera or at each other.

20. For some creative results, don’t concentrate only on bride and groom. There are many interesting corresponding objects to shoot, and these photos especially will make the event’s photo album far more engaging. Thus, take separate shots with single objects. Examples are the wedding bouquet, jewelery, clothing details, champagne glasses, wedding rings, wedding car elements etc.

21. The final point isn’t about posing proper, rather just an idea for a post production. Most probably you will have a bunch of photos from the event, so use them to make a small collage (or several ones). Pick only some objects or crops from other pictures and combine them into a balanced composition. Use some unified filter effects or simply convert them to black-and-white in order to achieve outstanding results. Such collages indeed are pure pleasure to an eye!

And furthermore take a look also at the other articles in posing series, particularly posing couples. Many of those couple poses can be used perfectly for bride and groom. And, of course, take a look to articles on posing female subjects and posing men. You may find there some appropriate poses for individual portraits