Jinny and Mark’s Singapore Pre-wedding Shoot
Pre-wedding shoots are my favourite to photograph, and being able to shoot in downtown Singapore is always a treat. Downtown Singapore is home to a myriad of colonial-style buildings and unique structures, which I’ve found to be extremely useful in coming up with interesting compositions in my photography. While I've previously discussed using background elements and shapes to frame foreground subjects, this technique proved especially pertinent during this particular shoot. The presence of strong, symmetrical, regularly-shaped architecture allows us photographers to displace subjects from typical center-weighted positions, fostering dynamic asymmetry. We could also lean into the stable symmetry of the backdrop to create highly symmetrical and traditionally pleasing compositions. My approach for this shoot was a combination of both philosophies, balancing both the dynamic and the traditional.
Another noteworthy aspect of this shoot is that a majority of the images you see were shot at 50mm. In my opinion, the 50mm focal length is far and away the best focal length for couples’ portraits. Trying to fit two people using an 85mm lens can be quite limiting, and anything wider than a 50mm would compromise the oh-so-coveted bokeh and background separation. The 50mm is not only perfect for including context in your portraits, but it also just “looks right”, a phenomenon often attributed to the fact that lenses with this focal length provide the closest approximation of how we see things with our own eyes (without peripheral vision).
