Time for Your Close-Up: Catching Quiet Moments and Expressions
Though a wedding has a lot of fast-paced movement (as I note earlier in this chapter), it also has quiet times that present golden opportunities for some really great photos. Some of the most iconic pictures, like a portrait of the bride in her dress or a candid of the couple in an unrehearsed embrace, come from these calm moments, and a wedding photographer needs to capture them effectively.
Being able to capture expressions is a significant part of wedding photography because you want to reveal the emotions your subjects feel in that moment, not just record what they’re doing. The human face is capable of communicating a great deal, and the quiet moments of a wedding give the photographer a unique opportunity to show how the subject is feeling.
Whether you capture expressions by posing a portrait or taking a candid shot, a knowledge of how to capture close-ups is very important. The following sections go over a few ways to photograph the quiet moments and create dynamic and inspired pictures.
Selecting apertures
Choosing an aperture is one of the first elements you decide when shooting the still moments. (If you don’t know what an aperture is, check out Chapter 2.) Aperture is one of the factors that determine your depth of field, or how much of the picture is acceptably sharp. Depth of field is used to create mood by softening or hardening the foreground and background of your photo.
There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule ...
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