Ngoc Nguyen of Skybox Event Productions put together a fantastic bridal event last week at the S Vietnamese Fine Dining Restaurant in Westminster. Titled “Let’s Get Married,” there was a really GREAT turnout – awesome vendors, lots of brides, and amazing food. As far as my experience with bridal shows goes, this one ranks in my top 3! . . . Thank you for inviting me, Ngoc!

If you haven’t been to S Fine Dining yet, you will be in for a incredible sensuous food experience. I had one of the duck dishes, my neighbor ate the scallops, and I was an eye-witness to Tiffany from All-Made-Up consuming the “shaken beef.” All 5 stars.

Floral arrangements by The Flower Tray . . .


Never in my life have I seen a “floating cake.” The people at Final Touch Bakery know how to float one though! This is a real cake! . . .



Other contributing vendors at “Let’s Get Married:”
Platinum Peaks Productions – Event entertainment and lighting
Huey Bui – Photo booth
All Made Up – Make up artistry and hair
Muse – Make-up artistry

I was introduced to High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging earlier this year when doing an architectural shoot in Orange County, CA. If you haven’t seen HDR images you can check out some incredible samples and the amazing possibilities of HDR imaging at Smashing Magazine. To put it in the simplest terms, HDR imaging is the process of representing a wider or more dynamic range of exposure (levels) in a picture. In its most basic form, a photographer will take three separate exposures of a scene (underexpose, correct expose, over expose) and then combine them together in one dynamic image. It is actually very simple to do and does not require a huge amount of photoshop or digital imaging knowledge. My very first attempt actually produced the following image for my architectural shoot. . . pretty insane!

Not bad for a wedding photographer! The building was shot in mid-day sun with post production done in Photomatix Pro and Photoshop (lens correction filter, levels, contrast).

HDR imaging works fantastic for scenery and architectural photography because you have the gift of TIME and very little movement in the frame. You can set up your tripod any time of day, proceed to take three or more uninterupted photos, and produce an exceptionally fancy image. Truth be told though, I am a wedding photographer at heart and found architectural photography to be a little boring.

I couldn’t find any samples of HDR imaging for weddings on the internet so I had to experiment myself. I came up with three questions that I needed to answer, 1) How can I apply HDR imaging to wedding photography?, 2) What happens when you include people and/or movement into the image and, 3) Do you have to use a tripod?

The most obvious use for HDR imaging in weddings is for venues.

First lesson, HDR does not produce very exciting results on overcast days. The reason for this is the lack of shadow and light. Second (and a surprise), having moving people in the frame is NOT a big deal for the final image. Cool! This is good news for HDR wedding photography! Here is the answer: To process the images I have been using the software Photomatix Pro (visit their website to see more impressive HDR images). When Photomatix combines the multiple exposures it will actually compensate for movement in the frame! BTW, Photoshop CS3 actually has a HDR imaging feature but it completely LAGS compared to Photomatix Pro.

When it came down to it though, shooting the outside of wedding venues with HDR really isn’t any different than architectural photography.

Here is where it starts to get juicy! . . . Inside the Mission Basilica produced fantastic results. Check out the gold altar, the colors and the paint details all the way on the ceiling! The light/shadow really popped with the HDR imaging. MOST impressive in the following two images is that the bride’s dress is not completely blown out. This is a constant problem in Churches where there is more light on the bride/groom than anywhere else. Notice, you can also detect NO movement of people!

If you wanted to capture this scene with only ONE exposure, you would have to choose either the dress or the altar or the ceiling, etc. HDR imaging allows the entire scene to be exposed correctly! That is SO cool! See how RICH this next image is. It almost looks like a painting . . .

This one shot in St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Long Beach, CA. . . .

All of the above images were shot using a tripod (5-6 exposures for each image). Since I hate tripods, the next test for HDR imaging in weddings was to see if I really needed a tripod. The Catholic wedding ceremony and the venue pictures above allowed extra time. Most weddings days are a fight for time and attempting to introduce new photography techniques at a live wedding could be time costly. These next two images were shot hand held. I shot 6 exposures for each image in a matter of 5 seconds. In between each shot I used my thumb to dial the exposure up two clicks (I start with totally underexposed and move to totally overexposed). Slight camera movement does not matter because the software will accomodate for that when producing the final HDR image. The software will align all of the images.

Lace dress on lace curtains? Try to get this with one exposure and no flash. Sweet!!

Wedding party experiment . . . not bad!

And finally the reception venue. The great part of this next picture is that the reflection in the mirrored cabinets along the wall is totally clear. Normally, there would just be white where you see the trees and other foliage.

Thank you for taking the time to learn with me! All of the images in this article were shot using Nikon digital cameras (D200/D300) and Nikkor lenses (10.5mm fish and 17-55mm zoom). Indoor images shot at 800ISO and outdoor images shot at 100ISO. It is my hope that this bit of information on HDR photography for weddings will help you become a better photographer.

I was inspired to learn infrared wedding photography after seeing the images in the book Infrared Wedding Photography by Patrick and Barbara Rice and ALSO the infrared wedding images from Scott A Nelson. Check them out – very inspiring! Capturing infrared wedding images with film cameras was complicated. Using bracketing and screw-on filters, you literally shot ‘blind’ and then hoped for the best when you brought the film to the lab to have it processed. Not to mention that weddings are a huge time crunch. Screwing on/off filters to your lenses and setting up the bracketing was a great waste of time.

After I switched to digital cameras the process for infrared wedding photography became one step easier. The opaque IR filter #87 was still required over the front of the lens (which means you are still shooting blindly) but you were able to see the result immediately on the back of the camera. This eliminated waiting for the proof sheets from the lab. That was a pretty big leap in a positive direction!

It was not long before private parties began rebuilding old model digital cameras and putting the IR filter directly inside the camera. The converted Nikon bodies (D1x, D50, D70) with the built-in IR filter have been the easiest and most effective way giving the user the ability to COMPLETELY see through the lens AND have immediate results on the back of the camera. Awesome!

Last year I had an old Nikon D1X camera converted for my infrared wedding photography. It is a little bit heavy compared to the converted D70 that is more recently available. You can see that the results are as great as film ever was for infrared and 100x easier and more time efficient.

BTW, the true infrared look can NOT be duplicated in Photoshop. As many times as I have seen a ‘recipe’ online for creating ‘realistic digital infrared’ through Photoshop, it has NEVER been even close. The major reason for this is that infrared light reflects off of every single thing in your scene differently! How can you possibly accomodate for that in Photoshop? Check out this angel walking through the trees . . .


Infrared wedding photography takes a little bit of practice, but if you are already shooting in manual then you will catch on extremely quick. There are not many wedding photographers shooting in infrared. This is a great opportunity to create a small but effective selling point for potential clients.

Thank you for taking the time to learn with me. It is my hope that this article on infrared wedding photography will make you a better photographer.
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