A Picture is worth a thousand words, that's the common turn of phrase. Anytime I see a picture I want to know the story behind it. What was really happening in that frozen moment of time? So the story behind this photograph is well, it was really frozen. By that I mean it was COLD. -2 during the middle of the day COLD. The wedding was on valentine's day. (Super cute right?) and did I mention it was cold?! The bride was such a trooper, she and her made of honor went out in the snow to get pictures in her dress and the whole wedding party went out after dark in the snow to do pictures. They were an awesome fun group. The technique being used in this image is called light painting.
The quick rundown of light painting is that to capture all the "swirls" the shutter remains open while you create the effect (run around with the sparkler as much as you want), either on bulb (shutter stays open till you tell it to close again) or as long as your camera will allow/ how long it takes to make the effect you are going for. Your subjects must remain very still to keep the image crisp, which is very hard to do when it is below -2 outside. To keep yourself from being "seen" by the camera you must keep moving and wearing black helps a lot because once light has hit the sensor, as long as something brighter doesn't come along, it doesn't show up. So as long as you are not lingering and darker than what the sensor saw earlier, you're good to go. My husband's source of light in this image was an off-camera flash that he used to light the entire scene, and then I had a sparkler to create the fun swirl effect. You can totally do this by yourself, but as it was freezing, time was of the essence! So I was very thankful for his help as my awesome second shooter. It was a lot of fun and an experience I will never forget, and I am sure this couple won't either!