The Runaway Bride, London – Behind The Scenes

I still remember very well when I took this photo. It was raining a lot on that day (on the same afternoon when I took my photo of the Big Ben, see post here) and when the rain stopped, I thought that this would maybe be my only chance of taking a photo with a blue sky.

Normally I photograph at sunset, so my hopes were not high to have this photo on my Portfolio. I remember to be very upset when taking this photo. I was on the right spot and after some time mounting my Tripod and checking the right composition, a wedding couple appeared on the scene, with a Wedding Photographer and his team, to take photos of the wedding.

At the beggining I was very upset, but then I noticed my chance of taking a fantastic photo, for which I was not expecting of taking at all. Quickly I triggered some photos, to catch the best position of the bride.

After they finnished the photo session, they apologized for being on the front of the camera, but unfortunately I didn’t remember of asking the contact of the wedding bride, to send her the final photo. I really like this photo, because I was not expecting at all the final result, when I was preparing to take this shot.

I think each person that sees this photo, will imagine a different story for this bride. Who is she? What makes her being there alone? Did she runaway from her wedding? Did the Groom runaway?

Post Processing

This photo is the result of three different photos, one with the wedding couple with their Photography Team, and two without them. I used two different exposures without anyone, because too have the sky well exposed (not too bright), the rest of the scene would be too dark. On the second photo, the scene is well exposed, but the sky is too bright.

I worked with the photos in RAW format in Capture One Pro, to get the best possible photos, before using Photoshop. In Photoshop, I joined the different photos on only one. I used the sk of the first photo and the photo of thewedding couple and the Photography Team.

After that I used the second photo without the people, with the scene well exposed, to remove easily the persons, excepting the Bride (sorry but the photo looks better without them :p).

After removing them, I straightened the photo, due to the distortion of the wide-angle lens. I used the Collor Effex Pro filter to pop the colors out and used curves to improve the contrast and change the saturation and intensity of some of the colors.

After those corrections, I sharpened the photo with a High Pass Filter and corrected the noise with Topaz DeNoise filter.

Check the Before and After.

Before and After

Has it already happened to you, taking a photo and someone or something enters the scene and changes completely the story of your photo?

Maybe someone who reads this photo, knows the Wedding Couple (you can check them on the Initial Photos) and give them the link and my contact, so that I can give them this photo 🙂

Happy shooting!

Luís