Note: Photographers’ Friday is a weekly blog series directed toward professional photographers, and in some instances, serious amateur photographers. All Photographers’ Friday blog posts will assume that readers have a basic working knowledge of digital SLR cameras, but if you’re left with questions or don’t understand any of the information, don’t hesitate to ask. We love e-mails!

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Among photographers, it’s one of those time-honored debate topics, kind of like whether to shoot Nikon or Canon and use zooms or strictly prime lenses. Should you blow out the skies as you properly expose your subject’s face, or keep the skies a rich, natural blue and use fill flash or some other means of brightening your subject?

When Danny and I started our business, we were at first adamant we weren’t going to blow out our skies and would do whatever we needed to keep them rich and vivid. Then our style changed, became a bit softer and more romantic . . . and we decided we were okay with losing some skies in favor of perfectly creamy skin. And then last fall — I believe through a straight-up accidental underexposure — we discovered a new way to capture beautifully-exposed subjects against a gloriously luminous background thanks to Caitlin and David’s New Smyrna engagement shoot. Here is that style-redefining picture. I mean, really. The heavens are singing!The keys to getting this type of photograph are at once simple and kind of complex. They do require a certain caliber of equipment and editing software, although this images is very minimally processed. Here’s what it takes:

You will, in most circumstances, need a camera with a full frame sensor; a camera with a crop frame sensor probably won’t do. Why? Because the sensors on full frame cameras — professional level cameras not available at local electronics stores — are able to record data in darker shadows and brighter highlights than crop frame sensors can capture. For this photograph, that was essential when it came to exposing both the bright sunlight streaming through the clouds and the shadows cast on Caitlin and David’s faces.

Now, Caitlin and David’s faces weren’t originally exposed to the level you see in the final picture. That’s where an updated version of Adobe Lightroom (version 4 is what we use) comes into play. When I took this picture, I exposed to capture the beautiful sky, which meant the couple were quite underexposed. Then, when Danny took the photo into Lightroom, he played with the shadow slider — one of the best upgrades over previous versions of Lightroom — and quickly found that all the data for Caitlin and David’s faces existed in the RAW image. Adjusting the shadow slider so that they became properly exposed without changing the exposure of the sky, we ended up with this final version of the image with this glorious range of light — an image that simply can’t be created strictly in-camera.

Like the looks of it? Here’s another one, from yesterday’s fabulous Ponce Inlet engagement session with Danyelle and Kevin.Of course this isn’t a technique we use for every shot; we only use on occasion — but when it’s the right occasion, it is the way we want to create breathtaking images that capture both the beautiful glow of the sun and the beautiful expressions on our subjects’ faces.

~ Laura