It's time for another installment of Behind the Image. I've had questions on a number of images, so in order to determine which one to share about, I did a quick poll via twitter and my new Facebook Business Page. Click here to see the choices. It was a close race but this is the image that won out in the end!
I gotta say, I feel a little weird doing a behind the image post on this shot because there's really not much to it. As always, though, I'm happy to share!
This image brings me back to how festive and unique Cameron and Laura's reception was. It was shot last May at Silverleaf Club in Scottsdale. After dinner, a mariachi band rolled in to entertain the guests and after a few songs in the reception room, the party was moved outside around the fire pit. It was such a fun atmosphere with the guests seated around the fire, lights strung overhead and the amazing music filling the air. I wanted to capture that in one image and I love how this one turned out.
In Camera:
This image was shot in RAW with my Canon 5D Mark II, on manual, with a Canon 24mm 1.4 lens, at f1.4, 1/100 of a second & ISO 1600. My focus point was on the lead mariachi singer. I didn't use any flash. The scene was sufficiently lit by the fire and the lights overhead.
It's important when shooting digital to expose for the highlights. And I knew that my camera would want to properly expose the fire. I wanted to overexpose the fire so that the rest of the image would be properly exposed. So I overexposed (according to what my in-camera meter told me) by one full stop. This is the image straight out of camera:
This image brings me back to how festive and unique Cameron and Laura's reception was. It was shot last May at Silverleaf Club in Scottsdale. After dinner, a mariachi band rolled in to entertain the guests and after a few songs in the reception room, the party was moved outside around the fire pit. It was such a fun atmosphere with the guests seated around the fire, lights strung overhead and the amazing music filling the air. I wanted to capture that in one image and I love how this one turned out.
In Camera:
This image was shot in RAW with my Canon 5D Mark II, on manual, with a Canon 24mm 1.4 lens, at f1.4, 1/100 of a second & ISO 1600. My focus point was on the lead mariachi singer. I didn't use any flash. The scene was sufficiently lit by the fire and the lights overhead.
It's important when shooting digital to expose for the highlights. And I knew that my camera would want to properly expose the fire. I wanted to overexpose the fire so that the rest of the image would be properly exposed. So I overexposed (according to what my in-camera meter told me) by one full stop. This is the image straight out of camera:
Most of the scene looks drastically under-exposed. But I'm afraid that if I had overexposed by much more, I would have lost even more detail in the fire pit.
The detail in the shadows was easily recovered in post-production.
Post Production:
In Camera RAW I took the blacks all the way down, upped the brightness a tad and took the temperature down a bit. Here are some great posts if you want more information about what I just said:
Histogram Demystified
Skin Tones Revisited
Here's the shot right before processing it to a .jpg:
The detail in the shadows was easily recovered in post-production.
Post Production:
In Camera RAW I took the blacks all the way down, upped the brightness a tad and took the temperature down a bit. Here are some great posts if you want more information about what I just said:
Histogram Demystified
Skin Tones Revisited
Here's the shot right before processing it to a .jpg:
I batch processed this photo along with the rest of my color corrected RAW images from the wedding into jpgs. When I do this, I always run a Kevin Kubota action -- X-Process Combo -- customized to around 18% on all of my color files. It just adds a little pop:
Once the file was converted to a jpg, I used another Kevin Kubota action - Digital Fill Flash set to about 18% - to further lighten the four mariachi members in the middle there. You can also do this step in Camera RAW using the local adjustments brush - which I often do as well. This is the final result:
That's it! Everything you could possibly want to know about one image :). Let me know if you have any questions or if you have other images you would like to see featured in upcoming behind the image posts. Also, if you found this post helpful, please share it with your friends via the twitter and facebook buttons below! You can also click here to learn about other resources I offer photographers!
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