I discovered something recently that was a bit surprising. Bridal photography is actually not near as popular in other areas as here in the South. It made me think a little bit. Why do we take photos of a bride, all by herself, well before the wedding day? After all, don’t we see images of the bride from the wedding day itself? I thought back to when Kimberly and I were married which was before I had really reached in to a true interest of photography. Those images are still some of my favorite of the entire sum of photos we have from around the time we were married. I love having the engagement photos and of course images from the wedding day itself, but there is something about looking at photos of Kimberly in her dress, framed in a special elegance that could only be captured with variety in a separate session. Bridal sessions are slower paced, relaxed, and there is much attention to detail. Wedding days are usually on a tight schedule and one of our goals as photographers is to actually avoid a wedding day turning in to a photo shoot so that couples can maximize time spent with family and friends. We of course aim to get some great images of a bride on her wedging day, but a bridal session is a special set-apart time where we can work with a bride in depth to capture her stunning self in more variety and detail.

Enter Augusta. We were able to work with Augusta and Michael last Fall for their engagement shoot. Since then we were really looking forward to her upcoming bridals and wedding. Augusta really seemed to click with a bridal session. Her personality is very genuine. We always found her quiet but not shy, laid back, but not reserved. She is an elegant person, which made working with her on bridal photography a perfect fit.

Now being a photographer in Southeast Texas always has it’s challenges, especially this time of year. You never know when crazy weather will linger, making very tough environments for natural light photography. As rain and humidity pummeled us for weeks on end we settled on an indoor location for the session. The Julie Rogers Theatre is always a great location for bridals and we have done work there many times inside and out. This day in particular was a heavy overcast day, rainy at times and of course thick with warm humidity. As such even our window light was heavily limited.

For a long while we have been working on expanding our working knowledge of all aspects of photography, not just our favorite pieces and situations. We believe it is a must to continually learn and refresh our knowledge in all aspects of our craft. In regards to lighting it is somewhat easy to get great images on gorgeous days outside. The images make themselves. For our clients we strive for consistency and so in this situation, with almost no ‘natural light’ available we upped our game to include some studio strobes during the session. Now, let me say, incorporating artificial light of any kind is a temperamental beast. Artificial light must be defined so much more than outside natural light. Outdoors you can visibly see how light hits a subject and you have almost limitless space on where to place a subject. There is no equipment other than the camera itself. Easy! So for these bridals we decided to take a hybrid approach. We used a great variety of lighting combos from pure natural light of the room and windows as well as varying degrees of lighting from our studio strobes, diffused with soft boxes and reflectors to achieve a consistent result while also offering Augusta a different take on our typical style.

 

Overall we loved the final result. Augusta was such an awesome subject and she put up with our running around with large lights while we worked to optimize the shoot. It also helps that photographing someone so beautiful is a huge inspiration and pushes us to be creative in new ways. We can’t wait to show you highlights of the wedding!