Wedding Photography in the Rain Tutorial

Photography Tips  •  Wedding Photography

There you are on wedding day, all set to take the couple’s photos, when it starts to rain. What do you do? Well, you can’t postpone the wedding! Wedding photographer Vanessa Joy with Adorama shares some tips to help you shoot wedding photos in the rain:

Background

Photographs in the rain look best when it’s dark. If it’s not dark, place the couple in front of a dark background to accentuate the raindrops.

Using a longer lens compresses the background and makes it appear closer to the subject, making the raindrops more prominent. If it’s still not dark enough, increase the shutter speed as high as possible, while maintaining a low ISO.

Lighting

Place a light directly behind the couple and turn it slightly more toward the groom. This is important as the highlights in the bride’s white dress can easily blow out due to the light. Don’t place any sort of modifier or grid on the light. Let it spread as much as possible.

Set the power on the light depending on the ambient light. If it’s bright outside, you will need to set the flash output at a higher power setting to overpower the ambient light.

In order to have some light on the couple’s faces, you can also place another light at the front. But, be sure to keep it at a low power setting. If silhouettes aren’t your thing, you can raise the exposure later in post to bring up some more details on the bride and the groom. But, doing so will introduce loads of noise in the image. It may not be an issue if the images are to be used for social media, but they’ll appear muddy when printed.

Are you a fan of shooting out in the rain?