The Essence of Ambiance

Serendipity.
Stacey wasn't planning on doing any bridals for her wedding, but we decided to get together when she did the practice up do for her wedding day. It was a rainy Sunday so we couldn't shoot outside. Thank heaven for neighbors with photo equipment! We started out the LATE evening shoot with a dark background held up with a makeshift background stand (PVC pipe), a harsh tungsten light, my SD600 and a reflector. It was great until just after we changed the background and then the light bulb burnt out... and we were left with the 100 watt light bulb in the standing lamp that sat in the corner of the room. I started shooting with long shutter speeds and requests for Stacey to hold as still as possible. We got quite a few shots with the ambiant light of the room! The "misfortune" that the burnt out light created was really just a fun challenge to whip out some creativity! The second image demonstrates best the available yellow light in the room---thanks to Adobe PhotoshopCS2 and RAW files the white balance was easily manipulated to get the soft white light in the first image.