How to Create the Perfect Hero Shot in Broad Daylight

Lindsey Chu

On a recent South Asian Wedding stylized shoot, Pye and several other vendors collaborated to produce what would be an incredible showcase of their work. One of these vendors included the luxury oceanfront hotel, Terranea Resort, located locally here in Southern California.

Before the beginning of the shoot, Pye asked all of the vendors what their specific vision or goals were. Terranea expressly wanted one hero shot of the property during what would be the wedding’s Baraat (the groom’s processional during an Indian wedding). They envisioned this shot to be an all-encompassing display of the beautiful backdrop of the resort from its expansive view of the Pacific Ocean to the lavish ceremony site. See how Pye becomes the hero of this shot below!

How to Create the Perfect Hero Shot in Broad Daylight

The Realization

Once Pye had the shot set up with a great vantage point (using a ladder) of all the desired elements, an issue arose. Tai the elephant, as well as the couple, blended into the background just a little too easily. The brightness of the scene along with our subjects made for a visually complex situation as we weren’t easily able to identify our subjects in the scene.

The Options

Unfortunately, our typical method of lighting our subjects up close, masking out the light source, and compositing the image together wasn’t possible in this scenario with Pye having to hand hold his camera, 20 feet in the air. So instead, he opted for more power.

How He Shot It

The Gear

Using the Profoto B1, Pye had it held all the way at the edge of the frame and had it powered up to 1/1 power. Aimed directly at the couple and Tai to the left and perpendicular to the camera, the B1 created a defining edge light to chisel out and highlight his subjects in an otherwise dynamic scene.

THE RESULT

profoto-indian-stylized-wedding
Of course, getting this image could have been done a couple of different ways, but this is just a prime example of how 500W/s of power really helped simplify our lives and helped us achieve our vision in a single shot. We hope you enjoyed this video, and if you want to see more, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

More From This Shoot

profoto_indian_wedding_02

profoto_indian_wedding_03

profoto_indian_wedding_04

profoto_indian_wedding_05

profoto_indian_wedding_06

profoto_indian_wedding_07

profoto_indian_wedding_08

profoto_indian_wedding_09

profoto-indian-wedding

RELATED POSTS

Three Tips For Choosing A Background For Black And White Portraits

July 19, 2025

Black and white is a medium that almost immediately marks a well...

10 Tips on How to Speed Up Lightroom

July 18, 2025

As the years have gone by, Adobe has consistently improved upon the...

Imagen Brings Its AI Editing Tools to Video Post-Production

July 18, 2025

Imagen, one of the best-known companies for speeding up photo-editing workflows with...

Natural Light Vs Flash: Budget Studio Edition

July 17, 2025

Each time we step on-location for a photo session, we need to make the...