Yep, you read right. An iPhone app that helped me at a wedding.
The app is Focalware and their website is here
“Focalware calculates the position of the sun and moon from rise to set anywhere in the world, at anytime of the year by utilizing your location and date information.”
It’s a really cool app and it’s a fantastic tool for a photographer who wants to know where the Sun (or moon) is going to be at a specific time/day.
How did it help me yesterday at a wedding? Well as you all should know light is slightly important in photography… and good light makes all the difference between a ‘blah’ shot and a ‘wow’ shot…
Yesterday’s wedding was unusual to say the least. The reception wasn’t in a hotel, it was in a barn. A spud barn actually. Spillanes in Kells. Julie-Ann wanted something quite different and certainly got it yesterday. The whole barn (HUGE barn) was converted into a barn dance wedding venue. It’s probably the weirdest and coolest venue I’ve ever attended. It was fab. There will be more posts about the wedding when the full thing is processed… anyway… I was staying around for the meal/speeches/first dance and during a break I took a walk around and spotted a green corn field out the back. It was looking into the sunset and I thought it would be great for shots.
The bride and groom were eating their meal so I said I’d take them out a little later. However, in the mean time a big cloud decided to plant itself right in front of the setting sun. I was gutted, there was no wind, nothing was moving. I reckoned there was a chance that the sun would just dip below the cloud before it set so this is where the Focalware app came in… It told me that the sun would be around the 2 degree above horizon at 21:35. There was chance it could peep through. So at 21:35 we went out into the field. 21:36 the sun crept into shot. 21:38 an it was perfect. This is when the shot below was taken. By 21:41 it was gone below the trees.
Without Focalware I would certainly have missed such a small window of opportunity or at least had the bridge and groom hanging around in a field for far too long..
I’m really happy with this shot, the sunset, the sky, the light hitting the corn in the field and giving that little bit of rim lighting on the bride and groom. In case you’re wondering if any editing has been done. Of course, but nothing major. I’ve just darkened the sky a little, brightened the bride and groom. I’ve increase the saturation a little. That’s all.
What do you think?
Corin Bishop photographs the wedding couple in a corn field at sunset.
by corin
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