Rana and Ali | Washington DC Wedding Photographer

Rana and Ali are a fabulous couple celebrating their wedding on three different continents, starting in Washington DC and ending their journey in Trinidad-Tobago where they’ll settle and call home.  It was a privilege to be a small part of this important celebration for them and their family.  The day’s weather could not have been better for photos at the US Capitol and the elegant historic Omni Shoreham hotel in DC.

Photography Tip: When shooting in strong mid to late afternoon sunlight I recommend off-camera fill flash, especially when dealing with a huge reflective surface like the US Capitol building – on this day around 4pm the sun was hitting the west side of the building head on, reflecting light right back at my lens.  This poses exposure challenges – how do I control that reflective light?  Answer: expose, or meter, correctly so that the US Capitol doesn’t appear totally washed out.  But then you ask yourself, if I expose for the Capitol, it affects the exposure for my couple, how do I control that?  Answer: Off-camera light!  Off-camera flash opens up a world of possibilities, but most importantly it helps you get good exposures when working with less-than-ideal conditions.  While natural light is great, In my opinion I believe this simple off-camera flash method should be standard knowledge if you’re a professional photographer.  For Rana and Ali’s photos they really wanted photos of the US Capitol.  I had very little time to set up any fancy lighting – ideally I’d love to bring some scrims and a softbox with a 800 watt White Lightning strobe in it to tame the available light and overpower the reflective surface of the US Capitol building.  But for the sake of ease of mobility and speed I simply went TTL with my lighting using my Off-Camera Flash Sync Cord for Canon EOS Cameras and Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash with a light modifier attached – in this case I used a Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce for the Canon 580EX Flashto soften the light just a tad.   I handheld it outward with my non-shooting (left) hand while I metered for the US Capitol building and/or the sky above it – this is so I can capture as much detail as possible behind my subject, otherwise the background can easily be washed out by the strong sun behind me.  I didn’t need the lighting for all the shots, but for the ones where the couple was under some open shade the off-camera E-TTL lighting made balancing the light shining on my couple and the reflective light bouncing off the white US Capitol building.