I Need Wedding Ring Tips ?

Q: I'm looking to improve my shots of wedding rings/hands. I'm not talking about 3/4 length shots of bride and groom with hands... I'm talking about more of a close up shot, maybe with the boquet & wedding dress as a background, or possibly on a mirror table. Zuga net doesn't have what I'm looking for, do you? Do you know where I can find some helpful info. on this?

A:Open sky or bounce flash for lighting. Bride holds bouquet in her right hand at waist level (or any convenient level for you). Her left hand goes across bouquet: fingers together and arched slightly, wrist breaks back slightly. (Notice that in Renaissance portraits, the middle and ring fingers are always together.) Groom stands far enough behind her that his left hand stretches out straight and you see it from the side. He can lay his hand across hers, she can be on top, or he can wrap his fingertips around her palm. Arrange yourself so that both rings are in same plane of focus. A white reflector under the hands is nice but not essential (have someone in the wedding party hold it). A white vignette helps focus attention on the rings. There you have it! I'm not sure what you are looking for. Posing hands is one of the more difficult parts of posing. On the other hand, one thing you can count on, especially if you are giving even minimal lip service to journalistic imagery is that the hands will be doing something somewhere artistically/graphically interesting, either during the ceremony, socializing, in the middle of the formals while waiting for that dang cousin that is gabbing when the family is called you could walk right up to the couple cause while waiting she is snuggling up and clasping his lapels, or you have posed them so their ring hands are showing nicely (the duke and dutchess pose is great for this) or even during the cake cutting. If you are talking about the rings in the box or laying out separately, you could ask to borrow them during a lull in the reception and either do them in the box next to the cake with the bouquet, or if loose, insert them into a fairly tight rose bud, set them on top of a bottle of champaign, or if before the ceremony lay the open box on the bed with some of the accessories, either the dress, shoes, or if at the grooms, next to a bow tie laying on the bed. If outside the church, lay the fancy bag the rings came in (they nearly always bring the bag since all the packaging costs probably as much as a plain band would wholesale

for) on its side with the open box of rings showing, do it on a bench or raised garden bed and have the groom'smen in the background way out of focus. rings are of course shiny reflective metal and photograph best by indirect light, window light, or bounced light instead of straight on flash, I like to bounce my flash off a side wall, you heck you ask a groomsmen to open his jacket and bounce off his white shirt. another thing I like to do is use a vignette so the background clutter fades, you get the presence of the accessories without the distractions of the junk becoming compositional elements. its amazing what a dimes worth of grey plastic can do for you.