Amanda + Brad

Starting this fall we have been offering FREE engagement sessions to couples interested in wedding photography.

Amanda and Brad were the first to take us up on our offer. We first met Amanda through our White Bear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, where she has recently taken up the Executive Director position.

They're an energetic couple and we wanted to bring that energy into the photos. We chose the St. Anthony Main area of Minneapolis as a background for the shoot (a very popular place this time of year). It was a particularly bright day, and we were getting some very direct late-morning light. The result of which was short, pronounced shadows and bright highlights. Some would say this light is a nightmare for portraiture, but it can be very effective if you embrace the high contrast and make it work for you. Of course we shot at a low ISO 100 to give us the most color saturation and allow us to use much larger f-stops. The trick about the St. Anthony Main area is to get enough of the background in focus so you can see the interesting shapes and features, but still blurry enough so you don't notice the dirty little details (dead plants, trash, etc.) So a lot of effort was put into controlling the depth-of-field to achieve exactly that. It was bright enough that the shutter-speed took care of itself and never dipped low enough to show camera-shake or motion blur.

This was also a situation where we had to use lots of flash or reflector fill to lessen the shadows somewhat... at least to bring some color to the eyes, otherwise we'd have a bunch of photos that looked like Emperor Palpatine...cool in the movie, not cool for portraiture. I know what you may be thinking. "It's already super-bright and you're adding MORE light to the equation?" Yup, exactly. Just crank that shutter speed up and use your fill to even out the mid-tones/shadows with the bright highlights. You'll never be able to compete with the sun for brightness, but a +2 on the flash fill can come close.

Bottom line...it was a great day with a awesome and good-looking couple. We hope to be posting about them again after their wedding. Congratulations Amanda and Brad.