I’ve been shooting some very beautifull bridal dresses for my 2010 wedding brochure. They were kindly supplied by Proposals of Abbeygate, Grimsby. As well as capturing some normal wedding day style images we also wanted to get some that had a slightly more fashion feel to them, Proposals have agreed to display some in their shop. Here are 3 of the shots, these were all taken with 2 small strobes controlled by the Nikon CLS system from the on-camera pop-up flash.

The aim with this shot was to use the backlight from the window to frame the bride and create a glow around her. I wanted to retain a little of the detail through the window so carefully balanced my fill flash from the 2 small strobes with the external ambient light. I can’t remember the exact settings for the CLS but it was shot with the Nikkor 35mm f1.8, the Exif details say 1/60 at f1.8. The 35mm is great for getting these full length shots in doors where there isn’t a lot of room and it is very close to a 50mm focal length on a cropped sensor DSLR. I always remember being told that a 50mm on a 35mm SLR was the closest focal length to human eyesight.

The low angle makes Becky look tall, I was sitting on the floor!

The two strobes were an SB900 on a stand about 6′ high to the left of the window shot through a large white brolly and an SB800 on a stand  behind the bride again shot through a brolly.

I think this was my favourite shot of the day, it was about 4.00pm and the light was dropping fast. I could see the sky was looking interesting so got Becky to pose in front of the five bar gate, there is an SB900 high on a stand to camera left but position almost level with the model, again shot through a large white brolly to soften the shadows. To camera right is an SB800 again shot through a white brolly but lower than the key light, about 4′ from the ground. The SB900 key was then tilted up to feather the light, this helps to retain a lot of detail in the dress and concentrate attention on her elegant shoulders.

My favourite lens for these type of shots is the 85mm f1.8 Nikkor, this was shot at f2.2 giving enough depth of field to retain detail in the front and back of the dress but thowing the sky, tree and to a lessor extent the gate out of focus. One of the great advantages of using something like the Nikon CLS system is it’s support for high speed sync, this was shot at 1/2000 second to bring down the ambient light. On reflection I could have juggled the ISO down from 400 to 200 and slowed the shutter one stop but the D90 does such a good job with noise at ISO 400 it doesn’t really matter.

By the time we got round to the fourth dress of the day it was completely dark outside, we started at 9.30 with make-up! My original idea was to use this very cream room in daylight with the beautiful coffee and cream dress, but I ended up lighting it entirely with 2 strobes. The room has two windows, one to the right of the fireplace when looking at it and one in the wall to the left of camera. I decided to try and copy the effect of strong morning light coming through the window to camera left.

There is an SB800 in front of the window to the right of the fireplace, about 4′ from the ground and fired through a white brolly, to camera left there is an SB900 on a stand level with the top of the window, I guess around 7′ from the floor. This had no brolly but had the opaque plastic diffuser on it to soften it a bit. I then zoomed the SB900 to 200mm and aimed it at Becky’s head, this is a tip I learned from Jo McNally, that 200mm zoom on the SB900 can give some fantastic effects.

I was very tight for space and resorted to a zoom lens, the very inexpensive 24/85 3.5/4.5 Nikkor (a great budget lens) at 35mm f4.0 and 1/60. I would have liked to be at a slightly lower angle but I was shooting over the top of the arm of a settee!

All these were shot on the Nikon D90, I’ve said before I really like this camera for location work, I still use a D2X in the studio and occasionaly the Fuji S5 pro for theatre work, but the D90 is a little cracker. Hopefully the D2X will be making way for a D3 or even D3s in the New Year, what I could do with that high ISO in dance shows!

As always comment and questions are always welcome and if you are getting maried check out Proposals website HERE.