Tilt Shift Wedding Photography
Neil March 10th, 2008
If you’re looking through Neil’s photos, you might see some weird looking blur…
Why’s this image blurry in a funny weird way? I used a Canon 90mm TSE lens which allows me to tilt the glass elements that form the image on the camera sensor. The lens can then focus on more than one place, which is why it’s more than just blur……
These two images connect the sharpness with the audience watching the climatic kiss and triumphant response by John.
Using this method I create more sharpness and viewable material in the picture ’space’.
This image Holly said was her favorite from the whole wedding, and in it I have use the same tilted focus to blur the unimportant parts of the image allowing the band’s equipment to not distract from the moment Holly and John are sharing. A normal lens would render Holly’s hand on John’s back equally sharp to her face. By skewing the focus I put all the attention in the picture into Holly’s face.
In this shot I connect the sharp area between the maid of honor’s smile and the raised champaign glasses to improve the focus of the story.
It’s funny that how fast paced the digital wold has become the most old-fashioned feature of cameras has been almost forgotten - just for speed. You see the old ‘box’ cameras were designed to allow the lens to move on purpose, when 35mm cameras were built they were built for speed and ease of use. My favorite lens in my tool bag is a 90mm TSE lens made by Canon. It allows me to focus really close:
(if i DO say so myself, that’s a really killer series from the ceremony)
The beauty of the tilt shift is that it allows you a plane of focus other than parallel to the direction you’re pointing you camera, so in wedding images, it gives me the opportunity to draw visual connections between objects that are important and blur objects that aren’t. So in the last image there, the maid of honor toasting hte couple where the maid and the glasses are in focus better illustrating the ‘moment’ than if the MOH and the fireplace were in focus as a standard lens would have portrayed.
In this picture of Robyn waiting on her bed I was able to make her expectant and thoughtful face sharp as well as her dress on the wardrobe. She is seen in a mirror, allowing for a very interesting perspective.
This one is definately a classic:
The only drawback is speed. I’ve worked with the Tilt and Shift and lenses and I’ve built on my own but for fast paced moments I don’t generally choose them because its just not possible to get the focus sharp and fast.
