Master Class

Family Portraits
The next series of photographs are some of the most important for every wedding. It's an entire series of portraits of the parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers, and various combinations of those people. Although I spend a lot of time on these pictures, I'm showing only one of them, because if you aren't part of the family, you probably aren't interested in looking at them. If you're part of the immediate family, however, these become some of the most saleable pictures of the day.

When I photograph the bride and groom with each of their parents hugging, I usually sit the bride or groom and bring their parents over one at a time to stand over them. A good posing stool will keep the seated people high enough, so that the standing person doesn't have to lean over to reach them. Most stools, however, are too short, so the standing person might have to strike an awkward, bending pose.

In this picture of the groom with his father, the father's arm around his son is the most important part of the picture. Then, with my telling him to "squeeeeze" the picture is completed. Again, even though I'm showing only one of these pictures with this article, realize that the true emphasis of my photographs is all in this series.

Spontaneous Shots
As I was completing my series of close-up portraits I noticed the bride starting to walk down the pathway to the beach. I absolutely flipped when I saw the possibilities here and shouted "freeze" to the bride. I made a series of vertical pictures here, but opted for the last shot that I made--horizontally. I got down on my stomach to place her head up in the sky area.

The final picture here was greatly enhanced. I first selected the sky area and made a duplicate layer of just the sky. I set the mode for that layer to "multiply." This intensified the sky to the colors that you see here. I then selected just the bride and did some adjustments in Levels to add contrast and brilliance to her dress. I did one final adjustment in Image>Adjust>Shadow/Highlight. The picture was cropped in the camera exactly as you see it here.

The bride and groom were so much into having fun on the beach I had him roll up his pants a little and asked them to run through the water's edge a few times. I had them looking at each other sometimes and then looking out to sea. I selected this picture because of the eye contact between the two of them. I was standing on my tiptoes to keep his head beneath the horizon line. I just hate to see a horizon line cutting through the heads of my subjects, so as you can see I'm either down low (keeping their heads in the sky area) or up high to keep their heads below the waterline.

A Golden Glow... Added Later
To finish off the picture session I posed them both in a back profile, being sure to show her bust line. I positioned the camera to place the sun directly behind her body. I exposed for bright sunshine, creating almost a total silhouette.

There was no color in the original picture, however. To create the warm glow I created a blank layer over the picture in Photoshop, set the mode for Overlay and filled the layer with a warm, golden color. Then, I reduced the Opacity of the Overlay to about 10 percent to achieve this result.