Happy Portraits Of The People You Love By Rob & Lauren

So it seems like a lot of people want to pick our little brains! It’s pretty funny to think we might have “secrets” but really we’re pretty open about how we work and what we do. We do spend a lot of time developing our workflow, and so we’ve learned a whole ton of what to do and what not to do.

In this post I’ll answer a couple questions that have come up and you can feel free to ask some more in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer those as well! Pretty soon I’ll be working on a Frequently Asked Questions page so you can see all this great info in one spot.

Question from Jane: What’s in your camera bag?

In terms of main components, these are our bodies and lenses:

(2) 5D for main cameras
(1) 30D and (1) 40D for backup

Lenses:
Sigma 15 mm fisheye
Canon 24 1.4
Canon 28 1.8
Canon 45 TS-E
(2) Canon 50 1.4
Canon 85 1.8
Canon 100 2.8 Macro
Canon 70 – 200 IS

Flash: (2) Canon 580 EX
(1) Canon 430 EX

We also have a ton of little gadgets and gizmos that we play with. I’ll post a more details list on our FAQ page when I make it.

Question from Meena: How much do you use photo editing in getting to a final picture? Like, what percentage of pictures are photoshopped/edited? Or, what are good techniques to use when editing/photoshopping?

Editing is a crucial part of the photography process. It’s one of the big things that can seperate an amateur from a professional. Not a lot of amateur hobbyists spend much time in Photoshop, whereas professionals spend more time working on the images than they do taking them (in general….at least we do)

Every single photo we take goes through two rounds of editing. Once through Lightroom, and once through Photoshop. In Lightroom we make adjustments to the contrast, colour balance, and brightness of the image. Then in Photoshop we convert to black and white, do toning effects, and other such processing. Photoshop is where we work the image to fit our intial vision. Lightroom is where we bring it to a good starting point.

That’s simply our process and every photographer will do something different. I know people who do everything in Lightroom, and it looks fantastic. Others do everything in Photoshop. Whatever works for you is great.

Workflow is also pretty different for a wedding photographer who needs to complete approximately 700 images per week, versus someone who is working on 10 images for a magazine.

And finally, our overall goal is to try to create clean processing. Sometimes we get a little more experimental, but overall we try to create images that will look good down the road. We play with the fads that come through, but are always trying to take our processing to a very natural place.

Questions from Jody: Which lenses to you tend to use the most for shooting weddings? Second question, where do you get your photos printed?

My favorite lenses are the 50 1.4 and the 24 1.4. I use those two for the majority of the wedding. The 85 1.8 is good for ceremonies, although I’d love to upgrade to the 85 1.2 at some point.

Rob uses the same lenses pretty much, although he will use the 70–200 for the ceremony. He also loves to experiment with the 45 TS-E during the portraits.

The macro only really comes out for the ring shots, and the fisheye only a couple times a wedding.

Next on my wishlist is the 35 1.4. I think it would be an awesome focal length!

As for printing, we get them done through WHCC in the States. It’s a super awesome lab with great quality!

Feel free to add your questions to the pile! And because posts without pictures are boring:

That would be me getting a little longboarding action in after a shoot. For the record, I wear my helmet 99% of the time. In this instance we hadn’t brought them along because we were shooting. But safety first kids!

Lauren :)

More questions!

Question from Boba (for everyone who is confused, Boba Fett is one of my family’s cats): What’s in your lunch bag?

Well, we usually eat a bunch of different things for lunch. Soup, Kraft Dinner, sandwiches, other simple stuff. Today we had a delicious lunch of beaners and wieners which was very tasty, but made me sleepy and I needed to take a nap. And yes I realize that sentence makes me sound like I’m 5 years old, and yes, I am ok with that.

Question from Kate: Can we see a shot in the first RAW stage and then the final product?

You sure can! I think this shot from Angeline & Dean’s wedding really shows what I mean about Photoshop being a means to achieve our initial vision for the shot.

This is straight out of camera (SOOC). You can see that Rob got a really good exposure, and that the 5D gives really amazing clarity and contrast. But the shot doesn’t really have the right feeling to it.

Rob did a lot of work in Photoshop and this was the final product. Now it really looks fantastic!

In a little while I’ll post some more before afters, even of more plain shots. Even when your lighting is nice and your settings are perfect, the shot can always benefit even from a little Photoshop!

Question from Nick: How do you shoot the processional? (*slight rewording)

I think many photographers will start to notice how difficult some parts of a wedding can really be. As soon as you get all the repsonsibility on your shoulders as the main photogrpaher, it can be pretty scary!

The processional, especially in a dark church is a huge pain. The best way to do it is to take the time before the wedding to test the lighting and get your settings in manual mode. Rob is the man in charge of this part of the day (I’m usually with the bride) and he does a ton of test shots to get it just right. Sometimes he’ll even make me stand in the aisle just to be sure.

In terms of focusing, we use the center focus and recompose. With the processional you’ll probably want a fairly wide lens so you can crop if you need to while still getting their whole body in the frame. One trick is to pick a spot in the aisle where you know you have your lighting and settings for, and shoot them as soon as they hit that spot. Do that instead of trying to get a focus the whole way down the aisle and that might help.

We also use very fast and pro-series glass that helps us to get a very quick lock on the subject before firing off the shot. It’s very useful especially when the church is quite dark. Also our flash units help us to achieve the focus so a good flash is key as well.