Photographer: Neal Urban
While Neal Urban’s wedding assignments sometimes take him to exotic locations, more often than not he’s working in settings that don’t look especially unique. To create images that match the singular mood of the wedding, he seeks backgrounds he can transform into something a little more magical.
Look for Reflections
Neal is always on the lookout for reflective surfaces that immediately punch up the drama. Here, he worked on a regular city street but near a shiny stone wall that added some character to the scene.
Posing the couple (then, the bride) near the wall, he positioned his camera to capture the reflection he wanted and added an SB-900 flash on a stand behind his subjects. The flash was bounced onto the wall; in the image of the couple, you see the light from it primarily on the groom’s face. “If I’d pointed it at the couple, there would have been too much light on her midsection,” says Neal. “Bouncing it kept the emphasis on their faces.”
For the image of the bride alone, Neal blasted the flash for a dramatic look with nice rim lighting. Then, he used the ample space on the sidewalk to give her some room to play with her flowing dress.
Try a Long Exposure
The image above was shot during a short, Friday-night wedding. “The couple only wanted photography for the ceremony and a bit of the reception, so we brought minimal gear,” says Neal, “but we stayed a little later than planned for some extra looks.” In a pitch-black field, Neal shot this image from a tripod. “We had only one SB-900 with us, so we placed it on the ground behind them. Then, Danielle stood about 2 feet away and lit the couple with the LED flashlight on her iPhone.” Neal put them in a pose that would allow them to stand still for a few seconds—because without a long exposure, none of the light in the sky (shining up from a nearby village) would have registered at all. He took a second shot of the background alone to composite with the couple’s image so he could easily remove Danielle from the scene.
Add Some Light
Sometimes light can completely transform a location. “This wasn’t a magical location or anything—we just saw it outside their tent and took advantage of it,” says Neal in reference to the garden image above. To create it, he added one speedlight, bounced up into the arch and foliage above them.
“A lot of images you see created with one speedlight behind the couple show them as silhouettes,” says Neal. “I prefer to take advantage of things over and around the subjects to bounce the light back onto them. This is pretty much straight out of the camera—including the natural vignette around the bride and groom.”
