The Soft Touch by Jim Cornfield

Author:Jim Cornfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608959518
Publisher: Amherst Media
Published: 2015-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

5. Romance in the Air

Soft Focus for Couples, Brides, and the Boudoir

There’s probably no more predictable photographic venue for pulling out soft focus tools than the wedding scenario. Not necessarily the actual ceremony, or the revelry to follow, both of which usually require more of a photojournalistic slant, but the portraiture, candid and formal, much of it preliminary to the event itself. As you may have noticed, prenuptial engagement portraits have become an important phase of every commercial wedding studio’s business model. We’ll look at applying focus manipulations to this type of image, too. But this chapter isn’t meant to be a wedding photography tutorial. I don’t presume to advise some of the imaginative talents who now work in this very competitive specialty. This will be a look at how I use soft focus techniques occasionally to invoke mood impressions on the periphery of this most iconic of our tribal rituals.

Two essential prerequisites are the two shot and the bridal portrait, both designed to evoke, for years to come, memories of the beginning of a happy, lifetime matrimonial union. We all know how that often works out down the line, but in the throes of preparing for this life-changing event—and not counting the stressful logistics of staging a wedding—most couples are in a kind of dreamy, intoxicating emotional zone. This conveniently front-loads their interaction with you as a photographer. They’re people who want to be in front of the camera in an arranged setting—maybe, for some, the only time in their lives they’ll be compliant portrait subjects—and they’re usually open to creative ideas. The fact that they are interested in cooperating is crucial to the interactive format that so many portrait sittings have become. In the old days, it was the intermittent consultation over a Polaroid test shot. Today it’s the almost compulsive process of inspecting digital frames on a computer or your camera’s LCD. Portraits are a collaborative art form anyway, but never more so than in the age of the pixel. Given this consultation process, it helps to create as much of your impressionistic manipulation in camera, rather than try to describe to your subjects how the finished image will look after you’ve done your job in after-capture. With soft focus, this is an especially relevant consideration; since the effects are usually so nicely stylized, they help to put the subjects even more at ease.

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