Mutual toasting

One of the highlight during a chinese wedding ceremony in Malaysia/Singapore is the mutual toasting (or more known as cross-arm drinking) by bridegroom and bride. This usually follows by toasting together with all the guests.

I guess a good position to shoot this toasting part of the couple is standing right in front of the stage. If I shoot from either left or right of the stage, I can only get the back view of one of them. And the other one, the face would be blocked by the toasting glass.

I was thinking if I could stand on the stage during the mutual toasting, I would try holding my camera high up and shooting from top down. I wonder how the photo would turn out to be...

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/WeddingShots7Dec2008

White Balance

In a wedding, most of the time the lighting of hotel ballrooms, restaurants are very warm in colour. It makes the photos very yellowish. The yellowish effect sometimes gives a very nice effect on the photos, but sadly to say, not all the time. The following 2 shots were taken in a restaurant.




The lighting there was totally warm. I was a 'strong believer' in taking photos without flash (I did not have an external flash). I thought the photos would be nicer without flash (Well, I admit that I did not know anything about flash at that moment). I refused to use the internal flash on camera because I really do not like the harsh effect on the objects.

I quite like the yellowish effect of these 2 photos. But I thought of giving it a try to adjust the colour of them. I used the 'Level Adjustment' tool in photoshop (Image -> Adjustments -> Levels) to play with the colours. I adjusted the Red/Green/Blue (RGB) channel separately (by selecting the colour in the Channel drop down menu).

In RGB mode, R channel is to adjust red and cyan; G channel is to adjust green and magneta; B channel is to adjust blue and yellow. So, to get a proper white balance image, I adjusted the blue channel of the images above to reduce the yellowish effect. I did some slight adjustments on the other channels too. Below are the end results after adjusting the colours.




Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/WeddingShots7Dec2008

Slide show

I wanted to make a slide show which was able to convey the romance, the happiness for this wedding. Of course, I want to do the same for other weddings as well!

Well, that was my first attempt, so I took my time to select the musics, the songs from the internet. I tried animation soundtracks, movie soundtracks, pop songs, wedding songs etc, and I finally settled down with these 3:
- Yuuki Cross, by Haketa Takefumi
- This Ring, by Tony Carter
- Si Bheag, Si Mhor (an Irish folk melody), by Carolan

Hope the couple likes my selection!

Post processing

The photo on the right is a photo that I should have turned on the flash when pressing down the shutter. I like this photo a lot but it was under exposed, noisy and it has lens flare.

So I decided to do some post processing on the photo.

First step was to remove the blue dots caused by the lens flare. I used the clone stamp tool in photoshop and cloned the area around the blue dots. The work done is rough and I shall improve on the skill.

After clearing all the flare effect around the black suit and groom's face, I thought it might show up better with a vintage feel. I followed Veerle's blog to get an idea on how to create vintage feel. You may google on how to create vintage feel in photoshop. You will get many tutorials from the web. Just select whichever that best suits your work.

I adjusted the brightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc on the photo based on my preference. And the final touch was to add in the vignette effect. Yah, I did this step last...

Photo on the left is after post processing.

This 2nd march in, the couple walked very fast...

Lovely and cheerful couple!

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/WeddingShots30Oct2009

Waiting for make-up session

Personally, I like a photo with the person at the extreme right or left of the photo.

In this photo, there was no place for me to stand on the bride's left. And in front of her, she was only like 2 feet away from the window (no space to stand too!). I left with only one choice - to take her right face.

So I positioned her on the right of the frame, trying to bring out the mood of 'a young lady waiting patiently to get married'.

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/WeddingShots30Oct2009

Group photo with bride

ISO: 800
Shutter: 1/30 sec
Aperture: 3.5
Focal Length: 20mm
Flash: 480EXII

This is one of the group photos that I like. The people behind the bride seem blur due to my wrong setting on the aperture. I should have set to higher f stop value (maybe f/5.6) in order to get a clearer image for the whole group.

I like the way they stood. It was like in a beauty pageant contest. And of course, the winner was the bride.

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/WeddingShots30Oct2009

Marching in

This shot was taken during the first march in of the wedding banquet.

ISO: 1600
Shutter: 1/160 sec
Aperture: 1.8
Focal length: 50mm
Flash: N/A

Since there was enough light shinning on the couple, and I was standing quite a distance away, I chose not to use flash. I wanted to get a fast shutter speed as the couple was walking forward. I would think there will be some noticeable motion blur around the couple if I were to use flash (the ambient light was not dark enough to make the motion blur invisible).

With aperture at f/1.8 and ISO at 1600, I was able to capture the image without flash. But of course, the down side is to end up with a high noise image.

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/WeddingShots30Oct2009