I had another really nice couple for engagement portraits at the Myrtle Beach State Park this past week. I’ve got their wedding coming up later this year. This couple brought along their baby for the moment, their little dog. I can’t remember what it was exactly, I know it was a poodle mix of some kind. I have two poodles myself, they are very sweet dogs as long as they are used to being around people. My dogs both love when clients are coming by to discuss a wedding, I tell them people are coming and they will wait by the window.
You have to be a little careful when a couple is mixed race like this one and have extremely different skin tones. His skin was very dark, and she was completely the opposite with very fair light skin. If you were to have a camera on spot metering and only metered for his face, hers would be overexposed. Or the opposite if you metered the camera on her face. Of course this isn’t really much of an issue anymore, modern cameras have so much dynamic range you really can’t mess up. A little shadows or highlights slider adjustments in Lightroom will balance out the dark and light skin a bit. Really a camera like the D800 is pretty much idiot proof even on full auto. The camera amazes me with it’s auto exposure and flash TTL.
Even as good as modern cameras are, I usually shoot on manual and just check every few shots on the screen, you really can’t go wrong doing it this way. Especially bright backlit sunlight is always going to trick up a camera on auto exposure, and you get a lot more consistency on manual which helps for a quicker workflow later when doing adjustments. This was a very cloudy overcast day which made things easier. There is no harsh sunlight or shadows to deal with, of course you also don’t get the nice look of the sunset, but it can be good in it’s own way. I hope you enjoy the pictures below, please comment if you do.
