We love placing our San Francisco city hall brides next to one of the North facing windows to bathe them in soft directional light. However, weather conditions in San Francisco frequently dictate us making adjustments to improve our city hall wedding photography. On this particular day, it was fairly bright outside with a light cloud cover. This allowed us to move to the opposite side of the building to get the best light. The image above was taken on the South side of city hall which provided a nice directional light but not too harsh. Under normal circumstances, this side of the building has harsh light coming through the windows because the sun shines right through. However, we knew right away when we approached the building that a day like this called for making lighting adjustments. A bright haze outside is one of our favorite types of outdoor lighting effects because it helps create beautiful photos inside the building.
This is one other good reason to hire a professional San Francisco city hall wedding photographer with experience at this building. Only people with knowledge and experience know the ins and outs of shooting here. Even with this experience, it can be challenging to handle the light appropriately at city hall. This challenge is what makes being a San Francisco city hall wedding photographer so rewarding. Things are always changing and it feels great when you can capitalize on an opportunity. We also frequently use our Professional lighting equipment to complement the natural light. This off-camera light creates amazing depth and feel to the wedding photos because it comes in from a preset angle determined by us. The key thing when we add these lights is to make sure we carefully balance the 2. You never want it to be obvious that an external light source was added. It should all blend naturally. If studio lighting makes it look unnatural, then you've done it wrong.
We often are asked if we did substantial Photoshop work on our Website images. The answer is a very strong no! We want our Website images to portray the same types of photos that our brides and grooms will receive with their standard packages. The only thing we have done on a few select images is remove people from the background using the AI photo removal technology available to us these days. Even that is done on a limited basis and we also will do the same for our clients in some cases when appropriate. We rarely deliver photos that have strangers and other couples in the background. It just depends upon the circumstances. (NOTE: We have recently made the commitment to our clients to avoid showing any strangers in their pictures, except for during the ceremony.)
This is the best way to capture winning images at City Hall. We want your photos to be as good as they can be, but at the same time we want to be realistic and let our clients know that there are times when a few people could be visible in their wedding pictures especially during the ceremony where we really do not have any control. It is a public building, so it is hard to completely avoid at certain times. Listed below are some of our more common Photoshop Enhancements that we do for our brides and grooms:
