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Critique Desired

1.
dppow1.jpg

2.
dppow2.jpg

3.
LCh2.jpg
 

Rachel Foster

New member
I found the composition of the first one particularly compelling. The couple adds warmth and humanity, the columns add a feeling of elegance and eternity.

The third one, I'd try a more oblique angle with the bride.


Nice images!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi John,

All the pictures work for me in a wedding album. They are well composed and shot and meet the standards required. I am going to present what I humbly think one might consider to enhance what is already perfectly satisfactory for the bride and her mother to be happy with and treasure for years to come. My ideas are to include more magic.

Going beyond that depends on your price point and what your clients want and expect or what your own esthetics are. To me, the prime pictures in the bride's book should be worked on to highlight the couple and lower correspondingly the attention to everything else. Or else each component of the photograph can be treated in a different way to make the picture, while a unity and in harmony, still be merely the just outer protective petals of the flower.

1.
dppow1.jpg


This is a great shot and shows the newly weds on the beginning of their journey together as husband and white. she is shown well. I wonder if his face is a tad pale. Now I'm not saying this is wrong. I do not know the couple, of course, but she has most of the strength and his heft might be increased. Also I'd have like much more free space in front of them as they are going forward, they have not arrived.

Still, there's nothing wrong with this delightful picture. I'd be happy with it. My points are what would make me even happier!

2.
dppow2.jpg


Here there's great detail in front of the priest. I'd lower the intensity and sharpness having the lights show what's there but dreamier since that is part of holiness and not something for sale in a department store.

I'd now work on the clothes of the family. The bridesmaid on the right has a harsh shadow and above that a highlighted shelf of her back. Similarly the folds in the boy's and grooms jacket are unneeded details and these I'd remedy too. No such fine details should hold us away from the bride and groom and their moments of this kiss. Once again, that's my view of things and may not be at all appropriate for the clients or your taste or the price bracket they have chosen.

In fact, I might myself consider zooming in on this kiss, (that is, at this stage, merely cropping) and just retaining enough of the neighboring features to build the milieu in which the kiss occurs. At present the subject is the wedding party and the kiss. My crop would remove the bridesmaid and boy on the right. They are so boring. The top of the picture would include only enough to not be decapitating the priest. So yes, the candles would be cut in half. If I needed the flames, I'd shorten the candles.

Now with the couple so asymmetrically placed and the little girls looking on, it makes for a less cluttered, agreeable and more emotive composition

3.
LCh2.jpg


This last one is again well made for an album but would be enhanced by not placing the bride centrally. The columns can be used to go further to the left and there could be more space in front of her. The architecture is powerful and should be used without reservation. I'd work much more on bring out every nuance in the fabric of the dress. She will then be the butterfly in this stone hall.

Thanks for sharing. Hardly anyone works harder than a wedding photographer and it's a shoot not repeated! Today, however, enhancing what we do have is relatively easy but does consume time or retouching expenses. So in the end, it's a matter of what people pay for!

Asher
 

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
Volume plus

I think that wedding photography is some of the most difficult . You are there to capture the story and emotion of an important day in the lives of two people under varying light and often officiants with their own set of rules, people who want to do their own thing and the color of the clothes (black usually for the groom against a usual white dress). And let's not forget skin tone issues too.

As Asher said these a re all acceptable for the album and the first might even be considered for a wall portrait. The bride's portrait composition would be my guess that the light was too harsh and so to do it justice you made it Black and White. I think it would look better in Sepia. The blown out look is trendy now and I am more of a traditionalist in my taste.
 
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james sperry

New member
hello john,
i do not have the expertise to give you critique on this style/type of photography as in composition, lighting and such. but, i can tell you that if i was part of the couple that hired you to document our event ... i could only say, "we made the right choice and the images are exquisite".
 
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