Adding an X Factor to Wedding Photography
Posted November 8th, 2009
Its not that hard to get consistency with the quality of wedding photography these days, The nikon d300 for example allows you to get six frames per second. This is great and anyone with such a similar priced camera can fire away all day and get some decent photographs. We’d like to think that any good wedding photographer however can and should offer something on top of this consistency; An x factor if you like, and have an eye for that something out of the ordinary or that something special that appeals to that particular client.
It is these type of shots that can bring a tear to the eye or make a person say “wow”. A good album or photobook in our opinion should a have strong consistent set of high quality photos with several x factor images displayed also. The album will then go from “good” or “nice” to “amazing” or “fantastic”
We photographed a wedding in July 2009 in Mumbles and Langland golf club. The image was created before the wedding for Sophie and Ian to use as the main image on the wedding invitations. I came up with the idea and Sophie loved it, even though I had the idea in my head, It took a while to figure out how to create it. They say never work with children or animals! However if it goes well for you, children can provoke all sorts of emotions when photographed. We decided to use a white sheet as the backdrop of this shot, we knew the wedding invitations were going to be in black and white so a white , soft background that looked good to the eye and was also comfortable for Evie made sense.
Once the scene was set up, we decided to use the back of a black digital photo frame as the blackboard that she is holding. The problem was ofcourse that she didn’t hold it as we wanted her to. She threw it!, ate it!, dribbled on it! and thought it was a toy! This however is where the quality of the camera comes into play and the six frames per second as mentioned above! It wasn’t long before I had the correct image that I wanted on the camera. After 40 to 50 clicks of the camera fired off at 6 per second the image was captured.
Next the photo was opened up in photoshop and text was added and overlayed onto the image. The words “Mummy and Daddy are getting married!! ” Slowly our x factor image was taking shape. I’d now created an image that would have impact. An image that would raise a smile and get a reaction of “how did you do that Sophie??” when she gave out the wedding invitations
Sometimes you can take a perfect photograph that is technically correct in every way but it can also be a boring photograph! So many wedding photographers offer technically correct photographs of great quality but they don’t go the extra step of at least trying to create x factor images. We like to think that Kapow has the vision to go that one step further and we will think and then think again about how to achieve this…
We believe the more you plan and think about photography the greater the results.
The image was then sent from photoshop and printed onto high quality glossy photo paper on my epson stylus pro 9600 giclee printer. The square cards were assembled and the photos made up by hand by ourselves for that hand crafted look and sealed.
This image was then also used after the wedding as the front page cover on the photobook. It ties in nicely with the invitations and dvd slideshow and looks great as a “set” as this is also used as the title cover image for the dvd slideshow.
Karl Baker
wedding photographer swansea
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