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SHOOTING THE WEDDING DRESS
Hey guys, we're Justin and Mary and today we're gonna be talking about how to get
a beautiful dress shot
in a room that doesn't necessarily have beautiful window light.
In the event that we walk into that "getting ready room" and pull back the curtains
and there's a brick wall staring at us or just really not a lot of good natural light coming in
we can take the B1 on a stand with a modifier and pretty much make that our window wherever we want it to be.
So considering the most hotel rooms have four walls to them
we don't want to hang it in the window for the back lighting
and we also don't want to hang it opposite to the window
because that's going to end up in a very flat light.
So that basically gives us two different walls to choose from.
Then the question just becomes: Which is the simpler background of the two?
I think the number one problem that us wedding photographers really struggle with
is that you go into a room and you know where you want to shoot but there is nothing to hang that dress on
so we have actually learnt to traveling with a 3M Command hook, a very fancy one, a silver one
and it looks great and now we can hang the dress wherever we want.
And for objects like dresses or the shoes we like to look for an angle that is
about 90 to 120 degrees. So if you imagine drawing two imaginary strings
one from the light source to the subject and one from the subject to you as the photographer
and then break out your projectors from eight grade geometry.
We're looking for those rights angles where we're slitghly larger at the 120 mark.
So for this shot we actually chose the 1x4' softbox.
Mostly because we like the way that the light carries across the length of the dress
but the softbox with the recessed edges allows us to control the light just a little bit more
and keep it off the wall as much as possible.
If you dind't have the 1x4' softbox a good alternative for that would be the 1,3x2'.
It's a litte bit smaller, a little more compact but it also get the job done.
We prefer the 120 angle beacuse it is the point where the shadows start to take over the highlights a little bit
and we really like that moody feel.
In this case we have made our own window and the window isn't scary so neither is this setup.