A slight special effect in black and white adds to the mood of this romantic wedding photo at San Francisco City Hall. One of our favorite locations to shoot here is the 3rd floor because of the fantastic north facing window. The light coming through this window is soft and directional due to the size of the opening. If you look behind the bride and groom, you can see the small areas of light on the floor. This is the soft window light coming through. A San Francisco city hall wedding photographer's dream! We then used Photoshop to add a little texture to the image to give it a different feel. It's important to know that we always provide our clients the standard image along with any special effect we might create for them. This gives you a choice! This picture was also made a little darker to make the light streaming in from behind more noticeable. We do these types of editing adjustments on a small percentage of your finished images to provide you with some variety. They are not for everyone, but they aren't meant to be!
The other added touch to this image was increasing the contrast beyond what is normally acceptable. As we mentioned above, this is more of a special effect that a standard way of handling a wedding image. We always provide our client with the standard image to go with the fixed up one. This way if you don't like the adjustment we made, you still have full access to the standard one. For you photographers out there, this is also called increasing the "structure" of the photo. It is an effect available on most photo editing software applications and it basically makes the detail of the photo stand out more by providing more contrast within that part of the image. It also lends a surreal feel to most photos and is particularly effective when used on architecture. Of course, San Francisco city hall has some of the best building architecture so needless to say, the effect works well here. I like this effect best when applied to black and white photos.
The image directly above was a staged shot that we did for fun with the couple. There were no other guests "fighting" for the bouquet when it was being tossed so the result was a forgone conclusion. That, in itself, is what makes this capture a fun wedding image. In addition, I was able to catch the bouquet in mid flight which added to the drama of the photo. The second image on this page shows another special effect which we like to do related to black and white photography. We leave certain parts of the picture in color and make the rest of the image Monochrome. This is definitely something different, but our brides and grooms and LGBTQ couples love it.
