Is there a more breathtaking backdrop for a wedding portrait than the sky? Not in our opinion! No matter what the sky looks like, it’s going to add beauty and grandeur to your pictures. With a sunset turning it orange, yellow and red? You’ll get stunningly colorful images! Painted with the deep blue of a perfect summer afternoon? Your photos will radiate joy! Dotted with millions of twinkling stars? Your portraits will be awe-inspiring! Even filled with foreboding storm clouds? You’ll receive pictures that hint at powerful and majestic forces that are bigger than all of us… like love! With that in mind, we’ll try to take at least one picture of you with the heavens expanding behind you. One like this breathtaking sky wedding portrait!
Why are wedding pictures with the sky soaring above you so captivating? There are a few reasons:
We hope that this portrait that we took at a wedding in Richmond VA illustrates how dramatically breathtaking sky photos can be. We’d like to think that it has awe-inspiring grandeur and highlights the beauty of rural Virginia. And at the same time, we believe that none of that takes the attention away from the couple who tied the knot that day.
On that particular topic, there are a couple of things that we did to make sure that the newlyweds stand out in the frame. And we’ll do for you when we take similar pictures of the two of you! Here is how we make that happen:
The key to really dramatic wedding portraits with the sky as the backdrop is elevation. For a couple of reasons. First, it gets you clear of the horizon, which is typically full of trees and other distracting elements. Being up on a hill (or a bench or anything else that’s off the ground) typically puts you directly in front of the gorgeous canvas that is the sky. That’s why we had these newlyweds climb up onto this ridge.
Ok, we realize how that sounds. No, we are not going to set you up to take the fall for a crime! To really make sure that you stand out, we’ll use other elements of the scenery to isolate you. In the case of this couple, we positioned the newlyweds in between a few of the trees peeking above the horizon. So your eyes go straight to them.
The one potential downside to the sky as a backdrop is that it can be extremely bright during the day and extremely dark at night. That presents a little bit of a challenge photographically speaking.
To get you to show up in the picture with a sky lit by the midnight sun, we have to make the heavens so bright that they become little more than a white sheet. Which means you lose all the beautiful colors. Similarly, it’s hard to get you to show up at all in front of a night sky. At least without external lighting! So we’ll either set up a flash in front or behind you. During the day, the former will illuminate you so that we can bring the sky’s colors into the picture. At night, lighting you that way will bring you out of the darkness.
Setting up a flash behind you will silhouette you against the sky in a striking way. And during the day, we don’t even always have to use artificial lighting. We can just have the sun do the job! If we put you in front of the sun – like we did for this couple at their Virginia House wedding – the silhouette will happen naturally!
Interested in learning more about our services? Please visit our Wedding Photography FAQ page for answers to all your questions! Ready to inquire about our availability on your wedding date? Contact us now to get the conversation started!
© 2023 Potok's World Photography - Husband & Wife Washington DC Wedding Photographers
