Shooting an outdoor wedding or engagement shots is challenging and here we will using a natural ‘sun’ light or we called it as available light.
No matter where you go than the sun will be the best light source that able to use for taking a portrait or even a landscape. By knowing how it works and optimize it in your photo shoot than you will get the best pictures that will represent love for the couple. Hi Bima here and thank you for visiting my blog, here I would like to share to you about how I dealing with available light to shoot an outdoor wedding or engagement session in my past photo shoot, specifically in Bali Indonesia.
The main key of having and outdoor session is knowing the weather, so due to my work than I will suggest my couple to get married during the summer and it helps us to get the best experiences both for me and for the couple. But duty call is still duty call so I have a story when I went to Bali Indonesia for wedding photo shoot during the rainy season but once again luck sometimes works better. Thankful for the wedding planner who also prepare a giant white tent just for the Plan B, just in case we got rain, and here we went to the Sanctus Villa Uluwatu.
Having a photo shoot in Bali is always amazing, nice view, great resorts, and photo shooting will always fun and rock and roll.
Available Light Destination Wedding Photography Tips and Tricks
Preparing Your Photoshoot
Preparation is still matters so don’t miss it! so here are my things to do for preparing my shots
- Having your references from other photographers seems to be useful, I also browse some photos and keep it in my phone so when I stuck for what I’m doing than I can open my phone and figure out.
- Come early to the hotels and introduce you to the family of your couple, get to know some names from the family so when you want to pose them than you can call their name, here I used to come 30 – 45 minutes before the ceremonial
- Do some test shots both for portrait and the landscape, it help you to figure out how to set your camera before the wedding begin
On this photo shoot I’m using my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with the most magnificent lenses that help me so much, 24-70 mm f2.8 L and 16-35 mm f2.8 L. Thank God that we still got a nice weather during 8 hours so there is no rain even cloudy sky since the ceremonial till the night party. So here I’m gonna share to you how to use available light for an outdoor wedding:
- Make sure you bring various of lenses with a great aperture, in case the two lenses that I suggested above is expensive than you can bring lenses such as Canon 50 mm f1.4 or Tokina for Canon 11-14 mm f2.8
- In case you want to bring another gears than having a circular reflector will help you to reflect the sunlight during post wedding session
- In case you don’t have any assistant than make sure you got water proof camera bag cover so you don’t have to be worry if the rain come
- The rest….will be your creativity
Outdoor Wedding Photo Posing Tips
- It’s a wedding, so make sure you got natural pose for your couple
- Let your couple enjoy the moment first that you will get hundred of beautiful images on your memory card
- Candid and photojournalism are the best technique to be learned, I recommend The Design Aglow Posing Guide book to be your best references before having an outdoor wedding photo session
Here is some pictures that I took during my photo shoot,
I captured the moment above when having a family photo session just nearby the cliff and it was amazing, the sun goes down so hard here we will have a hard shadow for the final result. For sure I did the formal pose but I prefer to put this photo on the album since it is look so fun and natural and that’s the point of wedding photography.
The picture below is the Villa’s garden, so when I’m done for introducing my self than I walk and sightseeing around the Villa and get this beautiful outdoor view. Actually it used to be a test shot but when I got amazing frame than I will put it too in the album. If you see here, there is 3 giant white tent out there, and that’s what I’m talking about how the wedding planner organize so well for the wedding.
Overall I only use simple tricks to do an outdoor photo shooting, so don’t ever think too complex, get enjoy your photo shoot cause I could say that you and I are in one of best business in world.
The sun goes down and we got joyful nights, everybody got a party and rock and roll.
I try to walk out from the tent and look at around, is there any awesome spots that I miss than I found this spot, it is in the side corner of the infinity pool so what I’m talking here is capturing the party moment with a light reflection on the pool.
I’m not using any flash here so I set my camera in a high ISO and open the aperture for 2.8 and set the speed shutter, Voila!! I got this on my frames and when I see it so I hope my couple also can see what their party look like.
My photos – I uploading my wedding and travels photos above in high resolution, in case you want to have for your commercial need than you can simply download it on Shutterstock
What you need to know about wedding photo shoot in Bali
There are thousands of weddings in Bali every year and I used to go there between June to October, so when you interesting in destination wedding photography than this city should be on your bucket list. First thing first than check about Visa to Indonesia and fine the best way to go there, since airport in Bali is serving international flight than you able to go directly from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, or even from your own country, just check your flight ticket rate before go to Bali.
Hotels in Bali is so vary so you may stay in the same resort with your couple or find another hotels for your privacy, here I used Agoda or Booking.com for whole of my trip.
Rent a scooter or car is the best transportation for sightseeing around Bali, please remind that there is also traffic in Bali especial when people back home from their office around 4 to 5 pm, so make sure you have an enough time to reach your couple’s resort.
Book and references that I HIGLY recommend:
I used to be an assistant for Joe Buissink back in 2012, it was super experience that I never forget for entire of my life. I saw him how to shoot, how to posing the client, or even I saw how he get fun during the photo shoot.
During 10 hours of shooting Joe teach me a lot of how to capture the moments, and why available lights is the best thing that every photographers had in their life. Noise and grainy are his best friend, even he still work on 35 mm film and get a lot of grainy effect that represent love and glamours, you definitely should looking for him if want to learn more in wedding photography
So for you who never see him on seminar or workshop I highly recommend you to know him more,
you can simply browse about him in Google or read his book of Wedding Photography from the Heart.
