Let me put my "serious hat" on and go off on a tangent and talk a little bit about the lighting difficulties during Ed and Allison's wedding. Although there was enough early morning light to utilize the video cameras without any artificial light, it was very difficult to shoot great photos. When the sun popped up from the ocean, it was so bright, through the camera view finder, I really couldn't see what I was shooting. Ed and Allison, were just silhouettes, that's how bright the sun was. I could not see the color of the water, the sky, or their faces. But I knew, that if I exposed the shot correctly, the camera would capture something that the human eye could not see.

For conversation sake, lets say I were shooting with a digital camera and wanted to accomplish the same shots you see on this page. If I underexposed the shot, I would be left with nothing but a yellow dot, the sun as the background. With digital, over exposing the shot would leave me with a white background. Even I exposed the shot perfectly, there would be large portions of the sky that would be washed out, meaning no detail. In order for a digital photographer to obtain a shot like any on this page, would require shooting the same shot, twice. One shot would be exposed for the background, the second shot for the foreground (in this case, Ed and Allison). The pictures would then have to be put together in Photoshop. The process would be tedious and troublesome.

But since I was shooting on film, I knew I could get everything right in one shot. To start, I only had to worry about underexposing the film. If I overexposed the film, the background wouldn't necessarily go white. In fact, overexposing film would have the direct opposite affect than digital. An over exposed shot would give me more saturation in shots, and more detail in the shadows, and more detail in the whites.

I quickly decided that I would use 100% flash to fill in the foreground (the couple), overexpose the shot by a full stop, and meter off a portion of the sky that wasn't too bright. Did I lose you yet with all my technical jargon? Those those who know a little bit about photography know what I'm talking about. The result is what you see. I could use my flash at a 100% and still retain detail in Allison's dress because I was shooting on film. If I were shooting on digital, her dress would have been completely washed out.

I was 100% sure that my shots would come out perfect, even though when I looked through the view finder, I saw nothing but shadows. I want you to take a look at the detail in these shots. Do you see how the water is black, and there is still details in the ocean. Can you see that the sun isn't completely washed out? How about Allison's white dress? There are details in there too. More so, the color of Ed and Allison's skin is 100% accurate. If I were shooting digital, I would have to salvage the shot, add in color, and probably get all the colors of that day wrong.