Leslie Searle Wedding
This photo was made in the Marty Leonard Chapel at the Lena Pope Home, Ft. Worth, TX. During the ceremony, I kept looking at all of the geometry in the chapel, including the lights hanging from the ceiling. I kept thinking that there's got to be a really cool shot in here with all of this "stuff". As we were getting ready to leave the chapel for the reception, after doing all of the usual post-ceremony photos of the bride & groom with family & the bridal party, etc. up at the altar, the couple gave Kristal & I a few more minutes to do what I call a fun, artistic portrait - something that we can potentially include in our portfolios. We used an old Canon 550EX on a lightstand, shooting thru an inexpensive 43" Westcott white umbrella, positioned just barely out of the picture space, camera-left. This light was aimed so that it lights the short side of the bride's face (she was more important than the groom, so only the side of his face was lit). Even though it was getting dark, we were still getting plenty of fill light from a large window behind the camera, so the fill flash (on-camera at the time) was turned off. So, only one simple flash unit was used for this shot, with its output set manually and triggered with Pocket Wizards. While Kristal was posing the couple, I layed down on the floor with my old EOS 5D & 24-105mm L lens, with the focal length set to 24mm (note some distortion on the couple). On the floor, I move the camera & my position around until I saw a composition that I liked. I like the leading lines on the floor leading to the couple. But I especially like the position of the lights hanging from the ceiling; if you draw lines thru these lights, they form straight diagonal lines pointing down toward the couple (I love diagonals). I also liked how the lights on the side walls helped frame the couple. If I had an opportunity to do this over again, I would place another flash (with a snoot) way off camera-right and behind the couple - to accent them and