This week’s photo is of Anita, a young bride who was married at the Bell Tower Chapel near Sandy, Oregon. The setting started out as an experiment in light for me. The ceremony had concluded and most of the guests were outside at the banquet celebration. I found Anita walking, alone, back into the chapel. I think she was looking for her newly acquired husband. Don’t tell her but I saw him out with the boys, I think there were cigars involved. Anyway, when I saw her walk through the chapel after the pews had been cleared I thought the setting would create such a beautiful portrait. So I had my assistant attach a remote wireless strobe to a pole and had her raise the strobe very high and aim the light down at Anita at about a 45 degree angle. The only thing left was to adjust the camera so the ambient light was as subdued as possible. The idea was to have the strobe light accentuate her and her gown. I think it worked perfectly. The only post processing I did was to use Photoshop to darken the edges a bit to help further draw your eye into the center and then I added a little Gaussian blur to reduce the distracting background.
If you would like to know how I made the light stick, eMail me and I will share my specifications and the recipe for a wireless remote light-on-a- stick.
