Beautiful Brides
Photo Contest

"I love the rich color of this image. In a pool of images that had a lot of partial desaturation, this one really popped and I kept coming back to it.  The composition interests me because typically having a subject leaning (or lying) away from the lens is unflattering but here it works so well, most likely because she’s up on an elbow. There are a couple distractions I would clear up - the branch across her face gives the illusion of a unibrow and, while there’s nothing wrong with that, it breaks up her face into two sections.  The lighting for the bride is perfection, but there are a couple hotter spots near the top and left that could use a fine touch." - Dale Benfield

"This almost won for me. I kept coming back to it, and the more looked at it, the more I was amazed by the perfect symmetry.  I’m a sucker for perfect symmetry and really have to hand it to keno for providing that. However, since this was a beautiful bride competition, and the bride took up so little of the frame, it was barely edged out.  By having the bride a lot closer to the camera, with everything else staying the same, this likely would have been the winner. The other thing I kept thinking of here was, “what is the story of what’s going on?” Having the bride’s back turned to the camera but having her turn away from the church made me think… “uh oh… she’s having second thoughts.” Haha, but seriously. I know the photographer was making a beautiful image, and achieved that goal, but keep in mind that photography is supposed to tell a story. " - Dale Benfield

"This image is so dreamy. I love the tonality of the forest and the addition of the lighting at the top of the frame. It’s possible that the photographer intentionally left the brides face dark, but honestly I think it’s too dark (with a hotspot on the nose). That’s of course being nit-picky, but with the pool of images being as great as they are, I had to start nit-picking to decide a winner. The pose is lovely, particularly the way the bride’s hands are (a difficult thing to make look natural and beautiful). I’m also a lover of tack-like sharpness and I feel that with the overall softness of this image it leaves me searching for crispness. Lastly, I’d have liked the composition slightly more if the left of the frame was cropped in somewhat. Overall, a truly beautiful image and one that Lisa should be extremely proud of creating." - Dale Benfield

"This image is most like my style of wedding/bridal photography, so naturally I’m drawn to it. While the backlight is beautiful here and creates a soft skin tone, the background is too overexposed. Finding a background that wasn’t hit so harshly by the light would do a better job of taking away from this stunning bride. What I love most about this image is it’s warm tone. So many entries were partially desaturated or washed out, so feeling the warmth of this image was such a breath of fresh air. The colors in the crown really popped and added life to the image. " - Dale Benfield