Sydney Opera House Breakdown "Cinderella"- this is an image of a wedding I shot in Sydney Australia in May 2009 that I get a lot questions about so I thought I would do something a little different and show a before and after. At a recent wedding one of my photographers asked me if I had the "guts" to show a picture before it was photoshopped. I love "dares" and I thought for this picture it would be instructional so I'm showing the before and after so you can see the difference.

I always tell my photogs that good images can't be made great, only great images can be made a little better. In this day and age of photoshop SO many photographers make the mistake of saying, "Oh well, I'll fix it in photoshop." When I first started I was very dumb and said the same thing. If you want to become a great photographer than you need to hone your skills and not use PS as a crutch. It's a great tool but you have to get the shooting part right. Become a professional photographer than a professional editor, THEN you are DANGEROUS. Enough with my rant.

I used a tripod to capture this image, my video guy to shine light on the bride and groom, put a video light next to her shoe to illuminate it, cropped the image a little, used some dodge and burn, and blurred the sky some. Settings: Nikon D3, shutter 1/80 at f/1.8, ISO 6400, 20mm. Hope this is helpful!