Courtney and Brian

Such a cool wedding on Saturday- the couple was so great to work with, the coordinator was great as always (Jill Watson), the guests were all so cool, and the location (Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niquel) and the weather were perfect too. Courtney looked amazing- thanks to Mom and Dad's genes but also to Richard Dalton (hair) and Liza Coggins (makeup). Richard was Princess Di's personal daily stylist for 10 years! I love this shot and had to get it out to share:
Courtney was waiting in the crying room in the church. She was watching guests being seated and anticipating the upcoming ceremony.

Tip: This was practically in the dark. This is actually brighter than what I saw with with my eyes at the time..... You might be tempted to use a flash because it was so dark but that would totally spoil the mood.

I used my 50mm 1.4 lens because it is the fastest lens I have. It is the least expensive in my arsenal but I seem to use it the most! I used it at f1.4 to get as much light as possible. Also, I had to use 640ISO to make the shot- yep, it may be a bit noisy but I would rather have the noise than no shot at all. Anyway, in a moody shot like this the noise adds to the feel.

Another rule broken: I shot handheld at 1/20th of a second: a couple other shots were blurry due to camera shake but I got a couple that were tack sharp. Also, I shot in manual exposure- all the dark area would fool the camera into over-exposing her face..... manual is key.

See a slideshow of the first half (the whole wedding show will be up soon) of the wedding at www.emausphoto.com/slideshows, enter dudley.