The image on the previous page, showing the bride and her wedding flowers was taken with my favourite lens - my 85mm f/1.4 portrait lens.
I don't always have the opportunity to take this kind of photo which is a shame, but so often the bride runs late and to save time, the photos that would normally be taken at this time of the day are abandoned.
This luckily wasn't the case when it came to Alison's wedding however, and the bride and all four bridesmaids were all ready in good time, leaving me with 20 minutes or so in order to take any photos that I would like. With four bridesmaids, all made-up to look the same with similar hair styles and matching bridesmaid dresses, I thought it would be a nice idea to get an image of them each, all ready to go.
I asked for a volunteer and one bridesmaid stepped forward. The light here again was perfect, as was the dark background. Because of something in physics called the inverse-square law, that states the brightness of light is inversely proportional to the square of it's distance. This means that if the background is twice as far away as the subject, the background will be four times darker. If the background is four times further away than your subject, the light on the background will be sixteen times less intense.
For each bridesmaids portrait, I asked each bridesmaid to stand roughly in the same spot. This is important because it meant that the light intensity didn't change from photo to photo, therefore allowing me to use the same camera settings for each image.
Each photo was taken at an aperture of f/1.8, giving just enough depth of field that both eyes on each girl would be in focus, but allowing the background to become a smooth colourful blur. This works to dramatic effect, making the bridesmaids really stand out against a dark background.
