Always Be Prepared

Whenever I leave the house, I always take a camera with me. If i'm travelling light, it'll be the little Fuji X100, or if I think that I may be photographing landscape or macro, then in all likelihood I will carry some Nikon equipment. One of the reasons why I do this is because I always want the camera to be an extension of myself. I don't want to take the camera out of the case and for a split second be thinking, now what does that button do again? By keeping a camera with me at all times I am always familiar with it's functions and settings, and quirks in the case of the Fuji X100. Sometimes this can result in a photograph being captured that I may have missed had I been fiddling with the camera's settings and wondering where everything was. A case in point is the image you see below. This was from a recent wedding shoot where I had about 10 minutes with the bride to capture a nice full length portrait and some detail shots. Most people who have taken a portrait photograph will be aware that when asked to pose, the subject can become stiff and the smile forced, leading to a slightly false looking image. There are ways to overcome this though. Getting the subject relaxed is of course, a very important step in helping create a lovely natural pose, but I also find that by cracking a joke just before I press the shutter can also do the trick, the resultant smile or laugh looks completely natural. Sometimes catching the subject unawares can pay dividends as well, as they tend to be more relaxed thinking that they're not being photographed at that exact second. The image you see here was actually captured before the bride thought I was taking the shot. The other shooter, Julian, was busy preparing the position of the dress and sorting out the reflector, so I asked the bride to just stand in the position I wanted the photograph to be taken and wait while we moved the equipment out of the way. I told her to look towards me as I wanted to check composition and exposure details through the viewfinder. As she turned, there was a lovely natural expression on her face, 'BAM', I took the shot, quickly altering the settings on the camera as I went. The resultant image, pose and expression, almost gives the photograph a fashion shoot look and one that I hope the Bride and Groom would be happy with, framed and on the wall.

Nikon D4 with Nikkor 70-200 F2.8. ISO 200, F4 @ 1/500 sec, + 0.7 E.V.

The bright sunshine hitting the wall behind the bride was tricking the camera in to underexposing so I quickly altered the setting just before I took the shot. The more you use your cameras, the more you get to know how they will react in tricky lighting situations. The little Fuji X100 would have metered this scene so as to almost cast the bride as a silhouette. I reckon a setting of + 1.3 E.V. would have been needed to correctly expose the bride with that camera. Always keeping a camera by your side, practising as you go, helps you see the world as a camera would, and helps you react that much quicker when you really need to capture 'that shot'.