Finding good location for couples portraits is important, since it’s normally these images that are most often ordered as prints. If I’m shooting at a venue for the first time I like to scout out some possible locations beforehand so I’m not trying to figure that out during the frenetic pace of a typical wedding day. Since I’ve shot a dozen or so weddings at King Estate over the years, finding locations there is easy! I particularly like these big wooden doors; they seem like something from an old castle. This set of doors is doubly nice because the location is always in full shade during the early afternoon; the couple doesn’t get overheated nor are they squinting into the sun. I love shots in full sunshine, too, but these doors work better without any direct light hitting them. I did use an off-camera flash, softened behind a 46″ umbrella, to light up the couple a bit, but I dialed it down to 1/64th power so as not to blow out the soft image I was looking to create.

There are two images below, taken consecutively. In the first image I’ve done a little work in Lightroom and Photoshop, adding a gaussian blur to the background. The second image has no such effect.