Digital Wedding Photography: Capturing Beautiful Memories

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Chapter 7 ✦ Shooting Outdoors

Background Choices

My preference is a background that is somewhat uniform and a medium to dark tone. Dark tones allow

your subjects to stand out much better than light tones. The sky is probably the worst background

because it is always going to be much brighter than the subjects. Figure 7-14 shows a group shot with a

light sky background.

Figure 7-14: This image shot on the island of Cozumel suffers a bit from the bright sky behind the

subjects.

17mm, f6.7, 1/700th, 200 ISO

Including the background

If the background itself is interesting enough to make it actually part of the subject of the image, you will

want to place your group close to the background so that you can make them both appear sharp and

clear. To do this, shoot with a smaller aperture like f8 or f16. This gives you a large amount of depth of

field that captures every detail of the background while keeping your subjects sharp as well.

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Part II ✦ Shooting Weddings on Location

Minimizing the background

In general, a background is just that— a background. As such it should complement the scene while com-

manding much less attention than the subjects. My favorite way of accomplishing this feat is to put some

distance between the subject and the background. ...