exposure for interracial couples

[KevinWeatherly]

Why not use the old film trick and meter off the back of your hand in the same light as the couple - works for me!

[Richard Dickins]

Originally Posted by Neil_vN

My suggestion is to shoot like you always do. You are already dealing with two extreme tonal values - the white dress and the black tux. Their skin tones won't be whiter than the dress or darker than the black tux.

Agreed! In this case I metered off the bride's face.



Photo above direct from the camera, no processing at all. In camera I used the 1D Mk III 's Highlight Tone Priority mode to make sure I got all the dress highlights properly.

[Mike_Guilbault]

Well done!! Congrats!

i'll add to that, nice exposure

here's a true personal story about this and my own experience - I was the "white guy" musician/songwriter in a 4 person well known pop/soul band (londonbeat) for many years and we had this issue all the time - there were 3 african american singers and me...each of the guys had a different skin tone of course as well.

we had our photos taken so often by press and promo photographers all over the world when touring that we learned where to stand so we would all get our faces pretty much evenly lit. the secret was for the singer with the darkest complexion to be nearest the light source and for me as the lightest to be furtherest away. after a few years we totally figured out exactly where to stand. where ever the shoot was.

even when being shot by super pros such as annie liebewitz and robert goldstien who often wanted us to change positions for artistic reasons, we knew that unless we consciously took care of this ourselves the shots would either have me (i'm a white londoner with at the time blond hair) too bleached out with no facial features and the 3 guys looking great, or me looking about right and the 3 singers with no features apart from their eyes showing. heh. if you check out the shots on the site linked to earlier you'll see a couple of shots that are like this all the same!

we also were very deliberate in most of our later editorial black and white shots to be photographed so as the skin tones were as even as possible between us. why? because we wanted our music not to be thought of as either "black" music or "white" music, just to be known as "good" music. our big hits were in the early 90s and were the first cross over house/dance tunes, and we were indeed popular across many different radio station demographics and we had folk at our gigs from all walks of life and all colors of skin...

photography has such power to be a social "leveler" and as a pro photographer myself these days I am all about creating wedding images that reflect the beauty and character of the couple themselves and not to unnecessarily underline any skin tone differences. I tell the story as it is and make sure that each person shot looks the very best they possibly can.

enough!

will

[dkphoto1]

My method is to take the exposure reading off of the darkest skin, that is the hardest to print. If the darker person looks human and the shirt is white, all else falls into place. People look at face, not clothes.