What is the 'Reality' of the Situation?

Images are created first in the mind, with the camera and the computer the tools that simple enable their final creation

When the light leaves you with little opportunity, its always good to
have a Steve holding a flash on a stand. Thanks Steve!

What is asked of the wedding photographer? In this age, that answer is not an easy one to define. Each image created has ten thousand options that can be applied to it; both within the moment of capture and then also during its post capture processes.

For many photographers, the idea of altering an image drastically removes the fundamental truth of the image and the wedding day itself. Their job, as they see it, is to record the event as it truly was, with minimal in-camera technique and very little post process alteration. For other photographers, it is quite the opposite.

Many of us will probably fall somewhere between these two options, and decide image-by-image as to the final outcome of each. The newcomer will be tempted to go a little overboard with the processing, often because of their inexperience at in-camera creativity. Lens perspective, depth of field, metering and composition will often be overlooked in the moment of capture with the hope of ‘saving’ the image, or at least creating it, in post. Those with more experience will breathe a little more, and think on their feet just a few moments longer. They are not about quantity, but quality. So their cameras work perhaps don't work as hard as those of their less experienced counterparts who may try to create a quality through quantity process.

Images are created first in the mind. They are foggy, mysteriously swirling blobs of inspiration that come to fruition either in a moment of epiphany and genius or through a long process of capture and post process.

The difference between the reality and the end result was the reason for the work that went into this series of images from Reuben andRachael’s wedding. The light was flat, shapeless and uninteresting, but the clouds were beautiful. The homestead backdrop was potentially overwhelming. The couple was nervous, but willing. Applying flash, deliberate underexposure of the ambient light and some work in Lightroom was the process that changed the foggy, mysteriously swirling blobs of inspiration into the images that came from these few minutes of shooting.  

-Shelton Muller

www.livinginpictures.com.au