Title • Daniel and Catherine #2

I don't shoot many weddings, maybe three of four a year, but when I do I really enjoy them. One of the main reasons is that they're simply nice events to witness, but they're also a great opportunity for 'people watching'. If you've tried street photography you'll know that one of the major problems is that a lot of people simply don't like being photographed, and a good portion of the rest of them have become increasingly suspicious of any form of public photography. At weddings though it's generally a whole lot easier: people are relaxed, your presence is legitimate, and so on. As such I often end up with a lot of great portraits that would have been much more difficult to capture in a public space.

On a more technical note: this one was converted to black and white using the channel mixer, a technique I discussed in quite a lot of detail in my latest video tutorial. If you're interested, there's some further info linked below, but the short explanation is that I biased the conversion towards the blue channel to accentuate the fine scale detail (stubble, hair, and so on). This is a technique that works well for male portraits, but biasing the conversion towards the red channel often works better for portraits of women and children as it produces much softer (and brighter) skin tones.

http://www.chromasia.com/tutorials/online/bw2_info.php