Capturing a wedding on the waves

On Monday I drove to Sicamous and spent the late afternoon and evening photographing a wedding on a houseboat as it drifted quietly along in Mara Lake.

Conditions were a bit cramped and hectic as guests arrived from out of town and manuvered over the driftwood bridge to get onto the boat.

Then, because the captain had rammed the houseboat onto the beach everyone had to locate to one end and hope he could back out of the mud and into the lake.

Photographing in a small cramped space is always a concern for me.

Many photographers opt for wide-angle lenses and don’t pay attention to the distortion or foreshortening caused by the curvature of the lens, but that distortion is a bother to me.

So I spend time moving people that I don’t want included to the side and cramming myself against walls and furniture so I can get everything in.

I also don’t want my subjects looking uncomfortable so that means I lack some physical comfort so I can be “comfortable” with my photograph’s composition.

As I have commented before I use a flash just about all the time.

If I have the room I will use it off camera by cable or wireless, but most of the time I have it mounted on my camera and use a diffuser if I am too close.

My goal is not to have the flash lighting obvious so I reduce its light with both a diffuser and by adjusting down its power output.

I know many photographers that are opting to use multiple wireless flashes, but on the houseboat I surely would have had stands knocked over and maybe even lost an expensive flash or two to lake waters.

With harsh back or cross lighting conditions I use the flash to open the shadows.

My concern over the years has always been the bride’s reflective white gown because much of the time it gets over exposed.

My experience has been to compromise by having my subjects’ faces a bit darker than I would like so the gown wouldn’t be overexposed and become a large white patch without detail.

But as I keep saying when discussing photography, “technology keeps changing.”

Even with digital and PhotoShop that compromise has continued to be a struggle and took more time than I liked on the computer, but now I use my camera in Raw and with the new, and continually updated ACR (Adobe Camera Raw), exposure compromises are becoming a thing of the past.

Yes, photographers still need to be aware of the exposure and I still recommend using the manual exposure mode, with the exception perhaps of a fast moving house party with your friends.

Get it as right as you can in your camera and the following computer time is then reduced.

I now do most of my editing in Adobe Raw, only using PhotoShop for things like blemishes and bags under tired eyes.

ACR allows for control of images with a workspace of sliders and users can control image temperature, warming the image up or cooling the tones down.

If the exposure is a bit under- or overexposed it can be tweaked just that bit.

Overexposed bridal gowns can be dealt with easily using a slider called Recover.

I like the fill light slider that opens up the exposure on the subject more than the background.

There is a slider called Blacks that is handy when trying to bring detail back into the shadow areas, or a groom’s black tux.

Brightness is a global slider that does just what it says, and the Contrast slider just about always helps one way or the other.

This column isn’t the place for a complete tutorial on ACR or PhotoShop for that matter, but I think that for those photographers that want to take their photography control to the next level and want their photographs to be everything that they can be, I recommend holding off buying that new lens and purchasing PhotoShop CS3 instead.

I waved goodbye to the bridal party as they motored into the sunset.

After the long day and long drive finally I returned home and downloaded my image files into my computer.

The next morning I had done everything but removing blemishes and converting some to black and white done in less than an hour using ACR.

Have fun learning how to take pictures correctly with your digital cameras. 


If you have questions please don’t hesitate to e-mail your comments or suggestions to me at 
 fotoplace@uniserve.com. 





John Enman owns and operates Enman’s Camera at 423 Tranquille Road in 
Kamloops.

Enman’s Camera offers professional wedding, family and art photography and sells selected new and used photographic equipment.

Check out 
www.enmanscamera.com or call John at (250) 376-4715.