Northern NSW and Byron Bay Wedding Photography

Here’s a before and after image from one of the most difficult churches to shoot in locally. St Kevin’s at Bangalow. It’s difficult because of the lighting. Amber glass windows fill the church with yellow light while pure white light comes in from any open windows.

By photographing with manual settings and in RAW I can readily fix this colour cast after the wedding. I normally do this by getting using the groom’s white shirt as a known white point to set the white balance and then batch process the rest of the images with the same lighting.

The problem is that when the colour cast is corrected to the true colour, any pure white light entering through open windows turns bright blue. All things considered though, this is a gorgeous church to work in and a delight to be the wedding photographer at.

Check out more of my wedding photography at www.davidfreund.com.au

A little while back while in the middle of a stock photography photoshoot in Sydney, I was approached by a man who can best be described as a boofhead (rugby league jumper, overweight, long very greasy hair, etc). At first I didn’t catch what he said to me and had to ask him to repeat himself. The second time I heard him clearly but was surprised and asked him to say it a third time. His aggressively toned question was, “Did you just take a photo of my daughter?”.

The rest of the conversation went like this:

Me: “No, and why would I want to?”
Him: “Well I heard your machine there going and you had better not be taking photos of my daughter. So what were you taking photos of.”
Me: “This bloke, he’s a model”, as I pointed to the subject of my photography. Then I made a quick comment along the lines of ‘it’s a public place and I can take photos of whatever I want’ and walked away. No use arguing with an idiot, all you get is two idiots.

The thing that irritated me most about this guy was how I was clearly taking photos in that spot and he brought his daughter over and deliberately stood smack bang in my background – and then accused me of doing something he thought was sinister.

Because of attitudes like this and increasing bureaucratic restrictions on photographers, there is going to be a rally in Sydney at 10.00am on Sunday August 29th at Campbells Cove. I can’t get to the rally, but if you can more details can be found here.

My favourite blog stalker (Hi Mum) has pointed out to me that I haven’t posted on my blog for a couple of weeks. ‘No excuses’ she says. I did still post on Facebook but she’s banned from getting on Facebook. I did have a decent reason for being off the air.

Took off with the family to the sunny Sunshine Coast for a holiday at Mooloolaba. Loved the place.

Great solid, creative photography that captures the essence of the individual will always stand the test of time. Advertisers and advertising photography tries to win the game of promotion by catching the eye with the latest and greatest thing or by attempting to set trends. The problem with taking this approach to wedding photography is that you end up with a ‘Velvet Elvis’.

The original Velvet Elvis was a trend that saw people buying portraits of Elvis Presley painted on predominantly black velvet cloth to decorate their homes. It was cool at the time, had a stab at quirky chic a short time ago but ultimately will forever be seen as tacky and trying too hard to be cool.

It’s my belief that wedding photography should be treasured forever as a selection of timeless, elegant and classic imagery that becomes an heirloom. Not something super trendy that ends up relegated to the bin of future embarrassment.

In the past trendy wedding photography has included a range of poses and effects that all were popular at the time but now really date those photos and make them look tired. An example I like to give is the photo with all the groomsmen wearing sunglasses. I still get asked to take this shot all the time. Now imagine the photo was taken in the 1980s. Everyone would be wearing wrap around sunglasses with fluoro arms and ‘iridium’ lenses. When the photo was taken all those in it would think they were super cool and looking sharp. Looking back at that photo now they’d just look dopey.

The latest and greatest trends in wedding photography rely heavily on Photoshop manipulation. Often this manipulation is done through commercially available actions. The result is a bunch of trend chasing photographers using the same Photoshop actions and producing wedding photos that all look the same as the next guy.

Over a six week period a couple of years back I shot 5 weddings at the same venue, with the same celebrants, same makeup artist and same hairdresser. The photographs and albums from all five weddings looked completely different. Why? It’s because I don’t use a set list of posed photos and don’t rely on Photoshop to make my photos look cool. Instead I photograph the couples naturally, observe how they connect with each other and capture the moments between them as they happen.

My wedding photography is about the love between the bride and groom. Classic, timeless and elegant wedding photographs. Something to be proud of in 20 years time. Definitely not a Velvet Elvis.

As a photographer I love to push the boundaries, try out new things and go against the grain of trends. Everywhere you look at the moment it is 3D this and 3D that. Not for me. I’ve been doing some experimental photography with inverse panoramas. That’s taking a 3D object like a sphere, and photographing the whole thing so it can appear on a flat page in it’s entirety.

The technique itself has been around for many years as slit-scan photography but I am trying some digital techniques to produce the effect. Here’s an almost 360 degree view of a model’s head in one image.