How Do We Create Your Pictures? It All Starts In-camera

Straight out of camera

Edited

Intro

When you look at professional wedding photography websites. Do you every wonder how that Modern Luxury Wedding Photography based in Houston creates their pictures? Usually, we look at a picture and say “wow! that looks cool“ and move on. But do you ever wonder what was required to create that picture?

We are all familiar with social media and how some people are highly “photoshopped“ or their lives look too perfect. Right? So, one must think to themselves: is photoshop how professional south asian wedding photographers in Houston make their pictures look that way?

Abstract

This blog will discuss how Houston wedding photographers create The Corinthian wedding pictures and your wedding pictures during typical wedding days, how this is part of our unique style, and part of our services - what we have spent many years learning, training, and perfecting, and one of those core reasons you choose my team for your modern luxury wedding in Houston. We have designed our services with you at the center of everything we do. When we photograph your once-in-a-lifetime wedding day, we will be ready to personally serve you and your wedding party and family. Becuase our goal is for you to celebrate on your wedding day and allow my team and I to guide you through your wedding day. We provide a peace-of-mind experience - leave your wedding photography to us and enjoy your once-in-a-lifetime wedding day with your friends and family.

We will touch on:

1. Photoshop and when those instances are necessary.

2. We use the Histogram to correctly analyze the scene, so we may create the highest quality image on-location before we open your file on the computer.

3. Show and discuss lighting modifiers we regularly use during wedding days and explain their use and purpose

4. Show both un-edited and edited pictures to show you how we choose to start with a high quality file lots of information before we leave your wedding and begin editing your pictures. We choose to not rely on editing as a crutch; instead, we start with a file we intend to deliver.

“Your camera takes really good pictures!”

I will quickly touch on one important point, then move on with this post: I have taught all of my gear (I refer to them as tools or instruments) how to do what it does. Meaning? The gear produces a picture in accordance to my current knowledge and skill-set. The gear does not make my pictures good or bad. The Houston wedding photographer is the one who requires to have adroit abilities, experience, and wisdom to position their lighting modifiers with flash around the modern luxury bride or position the wedding couple in natural light for dimension and shaping purposes, then creates the pictures by capturing light using a box with a hole. Some people call this a camera...
I see my gear as tools. I am the creator of the picture. And my gear (tools) enables me to create that picture you will look at in your album because of my creativity and overall ability. The camera gear has not thinking ability. The professional Houston wedding photographer has the thinking ability. So, next time you want to congratulate a photographer or tell your friend’s how much you like their wedding pictures. Tell them, “wow! You had a great photographer,” instead of saying, “wow! The camera that person used was really good - look at how well your picture turned out”. See what I’m doing there…
The gear in the hands of an experience and seasoned pro who understands lighting and positioning the couple in the light (posing) can make a mediocre camera work in their favor. Conversely, a professional camera in the hands of a newbie who has not invested in their education and using a professional camera will not be able to use the full-potential that professional camera has to offer. When that professional wedding photographer in Houston uses that professional camera after hiring mentors to learn from, read books on diverse genres that have helped shape their scope of education and widened their perspective, who has spent countless hours and years developing their abilities, perfecting their lighting, photographing, and posing on professional houston models (before earning money on Brides in Houston), and analyzing their pictures with their vision to perfect and further solidify their craft. This is the big difference between a photographer and a professional Photographer. The professional is expected to be able to create a picture consistent with their portfolio under any circumstance and without excuses for why something is not possible (within reason, of course).

Is Photoshop The Real Reason?

We make every effort to create the highest quality digital file while on location.

I don’t like to spend time behind the computer editing. Not my style. I’m a people-person who prefers to be sociable. You know? Hang out with friends barbecuing, making great coffee together with Blendin coffee, doing yoga at Yoga 6 in the woodlands, and doing CrossFit at F45. I make every effort to adjust what I can while on location, so I don’t have to remove that water bottle on a table in photoshop and take 30 minutes editing what I could’ve fixed on location in 5 seconds. I prefer to correctly set my light and camera exposure as accurately as humanly possible while on location. Event then, there will be some editing that is still required to bring out some information within the digital raw file. We’ll talk about that in the “Histogram“ section.

Capture The Moment - Difference Between Having and Not!

During fast-paced events, capturing the image is paramount. There are times when we may create pictures darker because South asian wedding can be very fast! There have been times I’ve needed to capture a moment fast! and it may not have been up to my high standards. At those moments…you capture the picture, having the picture is what mattered (the difference between having and not having). But even then - we make every effort to create the highest quality image file on-location.

Where We will Use Photoshop to Fix circumstances out of our control

Now, those times where photoshop may need to be brought in is when we find ourselves in a public place where we were unable to control variables out of our control. For example, inside a hotel, I can’t tell people to leave. I can kindly and respectfully ask them to move, but if they take offense and stay there to spite me; then, I’ll photoshop them out or if there’s another similar location we’ll move there or we’ll wait for that location to become free while we photograph in another location just to let people move on their own.

There are times I may purposely photograph darker (photograph with the edit in mind to create my vision - or what would look normal after editing) is when one important element will over expose and there’s no way of controlling that element by darkening it. For example, I photographed a wedding at Avalon Legacy Ranch in Dallas. For the entire ceremony, the groom’s face was lit by golden hour sun, while the rest of the wedding party beneath the shade was in open shade…that was annoying (thanks sun…). So, because I knew I wanted to retain detail in his face, I exposed for his face, and the surrounding elements went darker. Because if I had exposed for the open-shade wedding party his face would’ve lost all detail and would probably turn white or a bright color of yellow. So, again…the importance of hiring a Dallas wedding photographer is that your photographer would have the experience and wisdom to realize this is the only option. So, when I edited those pictures and delivered that wedding. I increased the blacks and shadows - which is what I mean when I said “photograph for the edit“. So there are times when strategic decision making will ensue to create the correct attribution you are delivered.

Our Goal is to Adjust Variables We Are Able to Control, So We don’t need to Photoshop

When I was referencing neglecting to adjust things that could’ve easily been done there. I am referring to: moving a bottle of water on a table, adjusting the bride’s hair, so her hair is not tangled around her ear ring, making sure her fingers are extended on her hand, so when I take a picture it doesn’t look like she’s missing fingers… These are times the professional wedding photographer must notice these variables.

What does “un-edited“ and “straight-out-of-camera“ actually mean? And why do I emphasize this principle?

This screen shot shows an example of an un-edited, straight-out-of-camera raw file from my camera opened inside the raw photo editor.

The above screenshot from my MacBook Pro 2022 shows three arrows pointing out key areas:

1. the bottom arrow shows the name of this file’s name. Notice the pre-fix NEF. That is Nikon’s native raw file;

2. notice the arrow on the right side middle arrow. It is pointing at “0“ on sliders. This means no edits have been performed on this image;

3. notice the upper arrow on the right side pointing at a graph. This graph is called the Histogram. The purpose of the Histogram is to show the distribution of pixels within an image and within particular zones of the image. I rely on this reference tool, in addition to, seeing the picture on the camera’s LCD screen because the Histogram accurately attributes the scene.

Histogram: It All Starts Here When Creating The Picture

Above, you see similar looking graphs with different settings used to create each picture.

Which Histogram above shows correct exposure?

Trick question! There is no perfect Histogram. It’s part of top professional Wedding Photographers in Houston image creation process. The purpose of the Histogram is to visually show a scene in pixels. This is important so we can retain as much information as possible.

Why do we need the Histogram if there is a picture on the LCD screen?

What happens if the LCD screen on the back of the camera has the brightness turned down or increased, and I only relied on the LCD screen? How would that change in brightness effect the pictures we create? And what happens if on a bright sunshiny day looking at the LCD screen is difficult to see because of the high contrast light from the sun? For example, look at your iPhone 12 outside and under the sun during a day without clouds. Have you ever found yourself cupping your LCD screen with your hands because it was difficult to see your screen?

Reading the Histogram and applying the insight we gain allows us to photograph your modern luxury wedding in houston, so we create your pictures with the most information and during bright and dark photographing environments - when looking at the LCD screen for accurate results is questionable. I have been told by other photographers while photographing weddings that some of my pictures (when they would look at my LCD and not Histogram) that I was losing information because they “look“ too bright - to their eyes. I know they were incorrect because I trust my Histogram, and I have practiced relying and trusting my Histogram because I have photographed in all sorts of environments and during various photo jobs. Notice all of our past stylish couple’s pictures’ on our website. All of their pictures were created through our unique process that is being illustrated in depth here. Using the Histogram, understanding what it means, and trusting the graph. This allows the houston wedding photographer to know if they are not capturing enough information as they possibly could, where they can push the brightness of a scene if the modern luxury bride in Houston is wearing a white wedding dress and if she may have darker skin. This is a situation that is difficult because her skin and dress are two contrasting areas for light and dark. This is a prime benefit of the Histogram. I can create the picture with confidence KNOWING what information I losing and about how much, what information is darker or brighter with a lot more confidence than looking at ONLY the picture on my camera back. The picture’s purpose is to help us interpret the graph and where that plotted information is on the graph.

The Histogram also helps when looking at the LCD is either difficult because of the bright sun (making my LCD look dark and difficult to see adequately) or while photographing inside a dark, luxurious wedding venue in Houston where the LCD may appear bright because of the contrast of looking at the bright LCD inside a dark candlelit wedding reception.

In either the bright sun shiny day or dark reception. If I relied on the LCD image, I may not capture as much information as I potentially could’ve. When not enough information is captured, the image file will be darker and parts of the Histogram will lack pixels in necessary zones. And why is capturing as much information important? The higher quality the file will contain more information in distinct zones and within all zones of the image. And sometimes if you look at my LCD screen while photographing your engagement session in the woodlands. The picture will look bright. But don’t worry. The Histogram is letting me know how far I can go when exposing an image before I lose pertinent information in vital zones.

Capture as much information as possible on-location!

I will expose brightly in darker scenes because I am bringing in as much information in certain zones, Blacks and Shadows without losing information in the Highlights and Whites. If the Highlights and Whites do get bright on my LCD screen. I am aware how far I can push them without losing that information by referring to the Histogram. There are times I may push them a little more. But, I know how far to push them while photographing and how much of those Highlights and Whites I’ll be able to bring back into the image when editing.

My goal is to photograph as clean as possible straight-out-of-camera and to include as much information from the scene. There is still information within those zones that can still be brought out when editing and adjusting the exposure of the image on the Histogram. When photographing, my goal is to not lose the Highlight and White data because that is where a lot of information is stored in the file, in contrast to, Blacks and Shadows. So, when editing, one of the first things I do is bring that information back into the image.

Of course, when photographing the Bride walking down the aisle, we would rather expose a little darker than brighter because we don’t want to overexpose the white dress and lose detail in the dress. After all…when you spend $4,000 on a designer wedding gown from a Houston Bridal shop. You don’t want to receive pictures that shows your dress solid white void of detail when you have embroidered desgins on your dress…

Lighting: Modifiers and look at un-edited and edited pictures

1. Beauty Dish: Gridded and Diffused

Above you will see pictures of a Gridded Beauty Dish and you will two edited and two un-edited pictures. Both pictures give proof to what I explained above. The picture showing the couple in the hotel shows a time when I had 3 minutes to do this pictures and 3 other pictures the couple wanted and it shows a picture where there were distracting elements (or aspects in the scene we could not avoid). You will notice in in the final edited picture there is no exit/entrance to the left. And in the un-edited you will notice where additional edits were made on the Groom. On wedding days, I specialize in lighting during fast-paced wedding days. If this were your wedding. This is exactly how I would handle your wedding picture edits: some parts of the picture I would edit later. Then, when your wedding is inside a luxurious venue where everything is easier because everything looks amazing!!! And notice how the edited and un-edited look very similar. That shows how that looked created on a wedding day using the same modifier. Notice how there is no light spill from the Bride.

This top modifier is called a Beauty Dish. A beauty dish is a soft box with a reflector plate inside to allow the light to spread to the full diameter of the edges as the light exits the modifier. The quality of light from this modifier comprises both hard and soft qualities of light. So, this modifier produces more contrast than an umbrella, for example. This black covering is called a Grid. In both of these pictures. You will notice the surrounding area where the couples are you do not see light spill from the Gridded Beauty Dish. This is due to the Grid.

2. Beauty Dish: Diffused

Above is the Beauty Dish without the Grid. Without the grid, light is able to spread but also not as much as an umbrella while still directing light to a distance. So, in this case, I knew I needed to put light on those of the couple with clean and strong light. So, if I used the grid the light would resemble a narrow flashlight beam. An umbrella would technically be ok for this situation. The only draw back: the umbrella spreads light EVERYWHERE! and is only good for short distances. The Beauty Dish without the grid still produces soft light (because of the covering which softens the light) and the box design of the modifier allows light to be directed at a distance, opposed to, that of the umbrella and for a wider spread than what the grid would produce. Since, I wanted to capture this entire scene, I knew I would need to pull the light far enough away to not interfere with the scene. In the un-edited picture in the upper right corner, you can see where the light was.

Notice how close the two images resemble each other for the most part. This is my goal for your wedding portraits. And this couple LOVED portrait time, so they reserved a lot of time for this in this timeline. Because we had enough time that I wasn’t running around and rushing. I had time to collect myself, place my light, work with the couple through some warm up poses, and finally put them in action. Putting you into action is my preferred approach to creating my pictures, so they don’t appear “posed“. Stiff pictures are not my style! I prefer expressive, classic-chic, and romantic pictures.

3. Beauty Dish: Un-diffused

Above show the Beauty Dish without the diffuser over the light. Remember earlier it was said that the natural quality of light from the Beauty dish combines both soft and harsh qualities of light into one modifier. When the Diffuser fabric is over the light, the light that comes out is soft. When the diffuser fabric is removed, the light quality is harsher than without the fabric, yet, still softer than not using the box at all because the light that comes out of the box is a larger light source than if a bare flash would be used. The reason the light on this engagement couple still appears softer is because the light is coming from this box and the box has been placed closer to the couple, and the light that is coming from this box is not overpowering the ambient light and is mixing with the existing light for shaping and dimension purposes of this couple. A unique quality of harsher light is apparent in this picture by noticing that texture on her face is more pronounced than if softer light or no light were used. Sometimes we will use lighting not as a sole light source inside a dark luxury venue or at nighttime. Lighting can also add shaping and dimension and we can reduce elements by using light.

4. Medium Umbrella

Above is the medium umbrella. This modifier creates a spread of soft light. This modifier is ideal for when the space is tight and the modifier needs to be placed closer to couple because of space requirements. This modifier is also great for photographing a couple when one is placed in front of the other, and less chance of leaving a dark contrasty shadow. And this modifier is great because of its wrap around qualities because of its softness of light. For example, there was a time when I was photographing an engagement session in Houston with the skyline in the background. I placed the couple beside this modern minimalist-looking concrete column. Because I was keeping in mind the shaping for the woman (placing a nice shadow on her cheek), I positioned the light in front of the couple and half between the column and half off. The umbrella was still able to place clean, strong, and soft light on the couple and I was able to add shaping to her face.

The umbrella is great for mixing flash with ambient lighting. The umbrella is not a long distance modifier because it spreads light 360 degress.

5. Small Umbrella

Above is the Small Umbrella. It does what the Medium Umbrella does on a smaller scale. We use these primarily when we photograph weddings inside The Astorian for wedding ceremonies inside. We also use these during South Asian Weddings in Houston. I also use these for photographing reception decor and for portraits when the space is limited and the gridded Beauty Dish is not required or I want to photograph a group of people quick and easy during a reception. This modifier could be compared to the Beauty Dish without the Grid, but the small umbrella would spread light more - if that is what I need or what I need to prevent.

6. Bare Flash

Above is Bare Flash. That is also lighting gear I bring to weddings normally.

Bare flash is distinguished when looking at a picture and you see a sharp and highly contrasting shadow line, and a strong difference between light and dark. Are you familiar with the sun on a clear sun-shiny day? What do the shadows look like cast by trees, street signs, and pared cars? You will notice a sharp line filled with dark shadow. That is the quality of light from a bare flash.

In the pictures above, you will see one close-up picture of a Bride. The purpose of this picture is to notice the shadow from cast by her nose (Loop Lighting). And in the other pictures you will notice straight line shadows cast by the dancing couple during their Walima and you will see a bride during her getting ready sitting on a couch. I was inspired by her sitting room’s modern design. This was also one of those times I didn’t have much time or I would’ve used the Gridded Beauty Dish.

The Gridded Beauty Dish and Bare Flash achieve similar results. The big difference would be the versatility and utility of the Beauty Dish box that is can accept a diffusing panel and a grid.

Conclusion

There are many variables which come into play when photographing your modern luxury wedding in Houston.
These tools coupled with the professional Houston wedding photographer’s wisdom, experience, knowledge, strategic problem-solving abilities, and general ability and familiarity to use their gear allows the photographer to create images. This gear is much like a mechanic’s wrench: the wrench is just a tool. The photographer and their aptitude is what makes the tool extraordinary!
At the end of the day. Your professional Wedding photographer in Houston is responsible for creating your wedding pictures. Not their gear nor Photoshop.

For more information about our services. Contact Us!