Mid-October Round Up
The end of busy season is close! The energy is shifting for sure. I'm trying to chill out a little. I only have two weddings left this year and a whole bunch of other stuff booked. I'm going to devote this week's newsletter to catching up on some shoots from the past two weeks. A couple of nice weddings and a couple of nice engagement shoots.
First, a quaint little clambake wedding with a bunch of folks from Connecticut. The ceremony was at Viewpoint Hotel and the reception was at Foster's Clambakes, both in York, Maine.
Next we have a goofy engagement session at that damned lighthouse with a couple who are getting married in just a couple of weeks. Although most couples get engagement pictures done long in advance of the wedding sometimes it's nice to do these little sessions right before so the couple can get practice hamming it up for the camera and we can all get comfortable with each other.
Then I had a wedding in Harpswell at Live Well Farm. It was a great time but you've heard me complain about lighting in barns plenty of times. This was a tough one to light. More on that in a second.
I used ambient light for most of the reception but by the time the dance floor opened up it was simply too dark so I had to set up lights. Most proper, non-barn venues have clean, white ceilings. Most rustic/outdoor weddings have a big white tent set up. In those cases I use an on-camera flash and bounce the light off the ceiling for a nice, even look. In a barn I typically can't do that because wood is dark and absorbs light. I will often times have to set up off-camera strobes. This barn was small so I couldn't set up lights on the floor without people knocking them over. This barn had a small loft in one corner. My genius solution to the lighting problem was to set up a powerful light on that loft, aimed down at the big white door you can see in the image above. This created harsh, directional light in one direction and soft, bounced light in the other direction. Here's what it looked like:
Then I finished last week off with a very Autumny engagement shoot at Round Pond in Shapleigh. I got to ride in a boat to get the canoe pictures.
This coming week I have a wedding (it's all barns for the rest of the year, expect more belly aching) and MANY engagement shoots. Until then...