Farmers Image of the Week #325

by | Feb 20, 2020 | Farmers Photo of the Week, The Blog

Sony A7III | Sony 24mm GM 1.4 | f2.5 | 1/200 | ISO 2000

OWN PRESET

Can someone win Image of the Week twice with the same wedding? Well it turns out that they can because this week, I’ve chosen this shot from the brilliant Matt Parry who also won a few week’s ago with a portrait of the same couple at their wedding. Matt must have been on fire that day because I think this image is just as strong as the last one. This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about Creative Process as I’m writing my talk on it for the Boring Conference in Warsaw. I’ve also been recording the new series of Farm Podcasts as discussed this a little with Sam Hurd who told me that he has started fasting when shooting to improve his focus. Matt spoke before about how this wedding was challenging, it was winter and the venue wasn’t offering many obvious options. So I wonder if having to really push himself has enabled Matt to push his creativity with this wedding. He has very kindly provided us with the original shot here so that we can see how this shot was elevated by the post production and Matt having the confidence to know that he had options beyond what was presented to him at the time.

Read Matt’s take on this shot below …

What Matt says ...

“I had a lightbulb moment about 5 years ago when I spent a day with a photographer I have always admired, Oli Sansom. I was in a bit of a creative slump and wanted to improve my portraits so went to my first ever workshop.
Oli was very upfront about how much he plays around with a lot of his portraits in post production and showed us some before and after examples and it kinda blew my mind and is something I have aspired to ever since.
I’m not talking adding sunsets or dinosaurs or spending hours in PS (I restrain myself by only using the tools available in LR) but during every edit I may pick the odd shot and spend 10-15 minutes getting creative. I know the purists hate this, but I kind of like that. I love a sense of honesty and humour in most of my work BUT why let that restrict your creativity?????
This shot set up was by the videographer who had given the groom a video light to hold which backlit the couple against a plain and white wall. I took the shot purely with the intention of having a play around during the edit. 

I added my standard B+W preset and got the couple looking how I wanted and then using the heal tool to remove a few bits, the brush to dodge the hell out of the wall and finally the graduated filter to burn in the black geometric element.”