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This Is What Happens When A Photographer Takes His Own Engagement Pictures

For the months leading up to our wedding, we had periodic discussions about what we would do for engagement pictures. We talked about locations, photographers, props. I don’t think either of us were particularly excited about the concept of being in front of the camera. I especially hate having my photo taken.

I came up with this concept after all others failed (or maybe we just didn’t pursue other options with any amount of decisiveness) . I new we only needed one good shot for our announcements/invites and I wanted it to be pretty dang eye-catching.

There were a few issues taking this shot:

1 I took it myself which meant a lot of running in front of and behind the camera.

2 I wanted the sun like this, but it is only in a good spot for about 10 min.

3 The intent was to get my foreground shot and then remove bodies and ladder for the background shot. That way I’d only have to mask out the ladder. I initially did not like this shot so I neglected to take a background shot. The ladder had to be cloned out.

4 The wind was not cooperating with the balloons. We took some shots with just the balloons and I was able to PS those in later.

Lastly, this was actually a result of our second shoot in the same location. In my first attempt, I totally screwed up the focus, but didn’t realize it till we got home. That was about the time my wife tried to convince me to do a more conventional engagement shot. All in all, it was a lot of effort, but I’m very happy with the result.

More info: mattjanson.com