PRE-SHOOT LIGHTING TESTS AT THE BEACH

This Monday, Matt and I are shooting a sunset wedding at the beach. While we don't consider ourselves wedding photographers, we are always happy to help people capture these magic moments.

To help us prepare, we packed up the cameras and a flash gun and went and had a play. The tricky thing about wedding photography is that the photographer needs to be unobtrusive, alert and agile. That is, unobtrusive in making sure they can get close enough without being noticed (this also includes having as little equipment as possible), alert to noticing and capturing those once-in-a-lifetime candid moments and agile in adapting to changing light conditions. To make sure that we are prepared to meet these challenges on the day, in the fast-changing light of sunset/early dusk, we had a great time practising with bouncing the light from the flash unit and finding fun places to shoot the bride and groom after the ceremony. Above are some of our fun test shots. Gosh, flash guns are fantastic! So much better and more versatile than using a camera's on-board flash! We also picked up a flash diffuser today which we will most likely test out too. Basically, it's a semi-transparent cup that goes over the flash unit and diffuses or softens the light (flattering for portraits).

We're having a hot summer here in Western Australia but sheesh, as you can see in the pics it was quite cool the night the photos were taken- I went from wearing a little sun dress to rugging right up! I love the beach at dusk. I feel so lucky to live in WA and be surrounded by glorious beaches!

atmosphere: green tea with mint and fallen idols