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Bride Alone Critique Part 1

so moving along, we're gonna work on bride alone, which was our next category. There were some extraordinary bridal portrait sent in beautiful focus. Excellent Lynn selections, beautiful choices. A background, really excellent light, both indoors and outdoors. That is gorgeous. I mean, look at that. Like, I can't I can't critique that. That's beautiful. Like it is done right all the way around. Beautiful treatment of Difficult like beautiful posing, beautiful graphical use of veils and backgrounds. Beautiful light and more beautiful light and difficult light handled beautifully. There were just some really very, very gorgeous, Very dynamic, very flattering. Very fashion forward. Really beautifully done. Simple images. Gorgeous. That's gorgeous. I literally can't help you with this at all. It's perfect. Beautiful use of what is clearly extremely difficult light, beautiful use of directional light, beautiful use of flare. Very well used flair. Just some very This is stunning. If I were g...

oing to critique this in any way, it would be your shutter. Speed is way too fast for you. It's an 8/1000 of a second. You could go to 160th of a second and really drop your I s o down. But This is gorgeous. That's gorgeous. That's gorgeous. Yep, yep. Yep. Yep. Simple and beautiful. It doesn't have to be fussy. It doesn't have to be fancy. That is so pretty. I can't stand it. It's just clean and simple and well handled with light. That is gorgeous. Yep. Yep. Yep. She's so cute. Beautiful, really, really beautiful. I mean, there's there were so many examples of utterly stunning bridal imagery, Really well handled light. That's gorgeous. That's gorgeous. But I want to step back and talk about some issues that were sort of plaguing people and again, not necessarily plaguing people, because this is a really strong category. There's a lot of really excellent work in here, but just a few very, very simple things that would have really helped elevate some beautiful images even higher. I love this textured background, but it's going straight to her head. You've got the top of the logs going right through her face. So if you drop down and shot a little bit up or got a little bit higher and shot down, you would have eliminated that and you would have been even in a better position than you are now, which is still pretty good. Drop down. You've got beautiful light on her hair like it's beautiful light coming from a beautiful direction. But the background is so bright. If you drop down and put her head against that dark tree line, the light would have been even more dramatic. A little under exposed and shift yourself. You say you look over to the right of the image, and it's a little bit bright. If you had shifted that space on the right over to the left, which I would imagine is still a darker space of the room, then it would have really highlighted that light that was on her face and gotten rid of the distracting light on the right. But if you didn't do that, you could always in post no shame in that dark and down that space on the right so that your eye goes directly to the bride's face. Great idea. I see exactly where you're going here, but the silhouette emerges into the top of the door. You would have needed to get a little bit higher so that her face was completely in that white rectangle. Otherwise it just sort of by sex across her face and gives you a partial silhouette. Yes, sir. Just interrupt really quickly. I e just want to thank Bethany Grace. So you guys, Bethany did post a question here talking about who's tuning in live in the Facebook group. I'm in that Facebook group, so feel free if you want to bring some questions in there, which great, So bring your questions there and we'll ask as we as we go through. So go ahead and go that I'm reading that that Chata live. So that's one solution right now. Watching What is the threat? People are commenting on who started Bethany Grace started, and it's who was tuning in live. So there's already some comments in there. I'll take a peek and we'll get as much interaction as we possibly can before way. All right, so just a few images that would have been improved by just a quick tweak of the background. Now let's talk about a quick tweak of the light. Most people were finding the light really well, just struggling with the actual implementations of how to use it. So, for example, using the light, the faces turned a little bit too far away from the light, so you're catching it. But not really. If you turned her face about three inches to camera right, you would be good to go putting the light behind the subject. Her face is too dark, you know. Your option is to either overexpose her face and completely blow out the background, which would be totally fine. Or to bring in a reflector, a flash or a video like to fill in her face on the side. If you don't want to lose any of the background, you know it's a portrait, but the eyes are kind of close. I'm not really sure what what exactly is going on, but a little bit of light brought in at an angle, whether it be a video like or a flash would have really helped, you know, isolate out that subject. You can see the direction of the light by how the shadow is falling on the wall, but the shadow is falling really harshly on the wall. If you pulled your subject maybe about a foot to a foot and 1/2 out from the wall, the shadow that would have hit the wall behind would have been softened down the shadow will be software. The further you pull your subject from the wall, you know, it just doesn't work, right, Like I get it. And it is a great find compositionally. But the dappled light all over the face distracts from the actual image. It is a very, very good try. You just lose your subject into the background completely. So little separator light in the background would have really helped so that they didn't melt away into total darkness. You know, it's just flat light, you know, it doesn't do anything to to illuminate or separate the subject from the scene. I completely get what's happening here. You can see the sun coming from the back right, but it's not doing anything to illuminate the face of the subject. So turning your subject into the sun or simply turning your subject around the other way and getting higher so that you can put the face against the darker background, then you will actually start to see that light. You can see it a bit on her chest, how it sort of separated from the background, but you don't get that on her face because her face is against such a white background again, Same sort of thing here. The light is really beautiful, and the light is really strong. But juxtaposed against the white background, it sort of gets lost. Same here. It's just under exposed. Nothing crazy. Just under exposed by about a stop and 1/2. You know that there's really amazing light about three feet in front of that wall. You see where the shadow on the ground turns into light. If you had stepped to the bride forward, just a couple of feet, you would have had really beautiful light on her, you know, just flat light. And there's nothing wrong with flat light. But because the area around this subject is so bright, it's really hard to get a read on the face. So adding a little additional light in on the face would have really helped illuminate everything again. The dappled, light dappled light on faces makes it really hard to read. Um, this probably would really go with background because it's you found the light. It's just the background sort of muddies it up a bit, and there needs to be a moment even when the bride is alone Sometimes it's beautiful light, beautiful composition. But there's no readable moment on the bride's face. And this is one of the things that we talked about a lot. When we judge print competition, when we judge it live is it's not enough to have a pretty person in front of a pretty place. There has to be some engagement or interaction in their face, even when they're alone. So she's just kind of smiling. It's camera, but it looks like a smiling for the camera smile, right? Like I need a light in the eyes. I need an engagement in the face. I need I neither to be a there there. Otherwise, there is no moment in it. You know, it's very clear that the photographer told the bride, Stand here and put your hands on the window so she doesn't look entirely comfortable. And instead of this is where kind of years of dancing makes me nit picky about arms and arm placement, nobody puts their arms up like this. If she's gonna put our hands up on the window, they're gonna be like this or one's gonna be higher or one's gonna be flat. They're not just gonna be like this. So if you're gonna have your subject, open curtains or put their hands up, just put one higher than the other, and it will read more. Naturally. You know the lights coming in from over the bride shoulder. You can see it by seeing how the shadows are falling on the ground, but her face is turned in a way that I can't read her expression, and I'm not really sure what's going on. And this is cropped in a way where I'm not sure what it is. Is it a picture of the bride? Is that a picture of the flowers? If it's picture of the flowers, I there's too much face. And if it's a picture of the bride that focuses on the flowers, so I'm not certain what message the photographer is trying to send. This is gorgeous, but I don't know what's going on. There's two girls on the horses, and the girls were looking at the camera, but then this person is sort of looking off and a she related to the girls. If she engaged leading the courses, is she just looking off because the photographer told her to? I'm not sure what's going on. So there are a lot of images that were just sent in where it was just person staring into distance. And I need to have some sort of sense of what they're feeling or what they're looking at again. Hands on doors. Not exactly rendering as comfortable looking, you know, face tilted too far down. You know, with the with the face tilted too far down. I'm not sure what this is. Is it a portrait of her? Is it a moment of her by herself? Because she just looks like photographer told me to sit here and look down, right? Like you've got to and even listen, I understand that subjects were really hard, especially when they're by themselves. But you've got to get them engaged in the scene in some way. Talk to them. You know, you're about to go down the aisle. Think about how you feel. You know, you're about to see your husband for the first time. How does that make you feel? I need some sort of moment on their face that separates this picture from. The photographer told me to sit here and look down. I mean this. It's in focus in the mirror, but there's no moment in the mirror. There's a moment happening in the foreground, but that's not in focus. And I don't know what that moment iss looking in the distance at what and why. You know I want to under. If she's staring into the distance seriously, what is she thinking? Right? Like I need I need more engagement, close your eyes and look down. That's great instruction. But then she needs to think something also or feel something, because otherwise this could have been done on any day at any time. I don't get any sense of the emotional involvement of actually being at a wedding. Same here.