Hey there! I am a wedding and lifestyle photographer from Edmonton, Alberta who specializes in laid back, timeless, and modern portrait journalism for the coolest of people around!
This blog-site gives you a window into both my personal and professional life. Here you will find images from the weddings and portrait sessions I shoot, places I have been, and friends and family members. This blog-site is also a source of information for potential clients, and to give them a peek into my life and a sense of who I am. Enjoy your stay, and please look around!
I do volunteer photography for the Edmonton Humane Society, and it’s usually it’s a good time hanging out with the pets. Usually they probably think im there to take them home with me, so they play nice, and pose for the camera. Today, not so much! It must have been because it’s halloween. However, despite all their trickery, they still deserve a good home! Check out some of these faces below!
Hello blog readers! Every now and then I get questions from clients or other photography enthusiasts how something is done and I thought it would be a great idea to share these tips with everyone. I’m hoping to do these on a regular basis, and I may run out of ideas, so please send in your questions!
One questions I tend to get quite a lot, and chuckle a bit every time that I do is: “What is it you are doing in photoshop to get that bright halo around some of your subjects.” I always chuckle because this effect requires no photoshopping at all! I refer to this as “backlighting”, but you may also hear other photographers refer to it as rim lighting. I am by no means a very good teacher, but i’ll explain how to do this as easily as possible.
Ok. So. The first step is to break one rule you have probably been told all your life – “Never shoot into the sun. Always make sure the sun is facing your subject.” This rule definitely makes sense, but I rarely ever follow it. I love sun, and I hate clouds. To use backlighting, the sun will need to be facing your lens and behind your subject. Crazy talk, I know.
Now. To make something clear. You don’t want to shoot directly into the sun. You’ll get some terrible sun flare and your photo will lack a lot of contrast and just look washed out. Now, sun flare is awesome, and there are some kick-ass photographers that use sun flare in their images all the time that are mind blowing.
Alright. Sun behind your subject? Check. The next part if the puzzle is your backround. You want to look for a backround that is darker – a wall, a tree line, a mountain, etc. If you use the sky as a backround it won’t work. The sky is very bright and your background will be overexposed completely. Even an overcast sky can be too bright!
**Tip** You CAN have the sky in the backround, but the backround behind your clients must be darker than the sky otherwise the backlighting wont show.
Here we have the lovely Breanne and Adrian. For the entire time I was photographing them I had no sunlight. It was an overcast day and just wasn’t the right conditions. However, the clouds suddenly opened up slightly allowing the sun to peek out giving me some tasty bright and diffused light.
So here we have the sun in front of my lens, and we have the brick wall as the backround. In this photo you can notice that there is more light on the back of Adrian which shows the direction of the light. Even though the light is behind them, it is a little off to the side, allowind me to avoid any flare (although some flare might have looked really good here!).
**Tip** Using a lens hood is also a good idea to keep any extraneous light from hitting the lens. Also, using a long lens will also make the job easier. A longer lens will compress the backround to give you a helping hand.
Sunlight behind subject. Darker backround. On to your camera settings.
This tutorial is design around the use of an SLR camera, although backlighting is still achievable with a good point-and-shoot. A reasonable understanding of SLR basics is also a good idea. I suppose I should have dropped that bomb at the beginning huh?
Set your camera to aperture priority mode (Av on a Canon, not sure what it is on anything else). Set your aperture at the widest setting (lower number = wider aperture), and zoom your lens all the way in. This will blur your background as much as possible. For those who don’t know, Av mode lets you choose the aperture and the camera will figure out an ideal shutter speed.
Now, frame your subject, focus on the eyes, and take a shot. Take a look at the back of your camera to check the exposure. If the shot is to dark or too light you can adjust your exposure compensation and take the shot again. You can also switch to Manual mode and adjust the shutter speed and the aperture yourself to correct the exposure. Although I always use Manual mode, Av mode is the easiest to begin with as it will usually give you a good ball-park exposure and from there you can adjust your exposure to your liking.
That’s pretty much it! Obviously there are so many more finer details to get into, but they would just overcomplicate the tutorial.
Please feel free to post any comments or questions or e-mail me directly!
My long time buddy Nathan asked me to shoot some family formals and portraits for his sister Sarahs pre-wedding celebration. Sarah and Enoch will be getting married in Salt Lake City, Utah at a later date but they wanted to put on a small celebration here at home for those who aren’t able to attend the ceremony in Salt Lake.
Sarah and Enoch are living in St. George, Utah. I’ve had the opportunity myself to visit southern Utah myself a few times, and I can definitely say that they are very lucky and fortunate they live where they do. It’s definitely a beautiful place to live.
It was a tough day for photography, very cold, and windy, but Sarah and Enoch were happy to tough it out for short bit to get a few photos together. Below is a quick selection from the short shoot.
My bud Nathan gets the special priveledge of a photo with his sister. He sure looks like a trouble maker doesn’t he?
Wow, on to my third post in just three days! Almost something I should be proud of, but it really only means i’m just getting caught up somewhat and it just worked out that way! But i’m definitely going to try and keep postings on my blog more regular, and just not photo-centric.
Here we have Dave and Amy! I met them through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend kind of situation. They hired me to come along on their destination wedding to Mexico this December. It turns out that those resort photographers just aren’t that great – but that topic deserves a post all to itself! For Dave and Amys engagement shoot we made our way to the Terwilligar Dog Park in south Edmonton. They brought along Fiji, who they adopted from the Edmonton Humane Society. Fiji is about 15 months old, and she is very much an important part of Dave and Amys life. Thank you for the opportunity you guys – i’ll see you in Mexico!
We’ve had just aweful weather lately. I can’t seem to score a photo shoot these days with any kind of sunshine. I like to tell my clients, “Yeah, lets get up early in the morning to catch that nice morning light!”. Then it turns out to be raining, overcast, and just blah. It’s a little embarassing. Thanks mother nature! Thankfully the wonderful people I get to photograph are awesome, and we are able to just forget about the weather and do our thing. Such was the case shooting Jessica and Graham. It was a crummy morning, but they still laughed at my bad jokes and walked through wet grass in heels.
Jessica and Graham will be getting married on the east coast next year. I wish you both the best in your wedding planning and future together! Thank you for coming all the way from Swan Hills for a walk in the rain.
Enjoy 
