Story telling photography

is fantastic for capturing moments but it’s a VERY big challenge for a photographer to make something that’s artistically special with limited time and limited control on the environment.

The goal is to always pictures straight that are ready to go straight out of the camera, but there are situations where a bit of Photoshop magic can really make a (subtle) difference. It’s can be the difference between a we’re-not-going-to-give-this-to-a-client image and a this-is-spectacular-and-going-into-the-wedding-album-or–hang up on a wall.

One hour of photogaphy requires around 3-4 hours of filtering, retouching, and preparing of images. All images we deliver to clients are images that we are proud of (and we’re the toughest judges of our own work!).

So don’t worry your photography, we (and Photoshop) do our best to have you covered no matter what happens. All you have to do is to have a lot of fun!

The first picture below was a random moment while walking through a town and a gust of wind suddenly lifted up her veil. The moment only lasted a fraction of a second but ended up being our of our favorite images of all time (in particular since it shows how unplanned and the smallest of moments can sometimes be the best).

Experience has taught us that a rainy day will have very little effect on the wedding pictures. First of all because 90% of wedding pictures are taken in areas protected from the rain and  furthermore because during the entire day there are always little moments where it isn’t raining which allows us to take pictures like the one just above.

The picture below was taken on top of a castle during a 30 second walk between the dinner location and the dancing location for the rest of the evening. The location, the view and the sunset were stunning and while taking the walk we asked the bride and groom if they felt like walking to that corner and take a minute for just to two of them to just pause and savoir the moment just between the two of them and with no guests around. You can see the light stand in the original picture that was used to light them up. This is a perfect example of how we LOVE to work: don’t ask people to smile but instead create moments and emotions and then capture those on camera.

The bride and groom were just married at the church above and they had been showered with flowers by all of their close ones and a few minutes of festive celebrations had taken place. The people had started to move away and that led to this moment where they turned to one another and celebrated in their own way. The magic moment was there with a perfect pose, but…. well… agh, stuff it, let’s just open up Photoshop.

The sun is incredible sharp and hot on the French Riviera in the summer. Here’s a simple trick for anyone taking pictures in these conditions: place people with their back towards the sun. This will give them a good and even exposure on their face (without black raccoon eyes due to the sun casting a strong shadow) and it will also mean they can look normally without squinting their eyes. It’s also less hot so people don’t sweat as quickly and the make-up won’t run. Then expose on the faces (or slightly darker) or as in this case, the exposure was done more on the dress so that the details wouldn’t get washed out. Luckily cameras and retouching software nowadays have a big dynamic range so that we can even out the exposure. Some pictures work better in colour and this one really works best in black & white. A variant of this picture taken a few seconds later was enlarged to 2 meters wide and now hangs on a wall.