processing

As the ones responsible for capturing a wedding day in images, we photographers are under a ton of pressure. To help you next time you’re asked (or even hired) to assume the role, we tapped ten exciting bridal pros—all chosen by our sister magazine, American Photo, as the best of 2012—for their techniques and strategies for bringing a smile to the face of even the scariest bridezilla.

A rite of passage occurs when you move beyond photographing what you see and begin to actively manipulate a scene or subject to produce better photos. Some photographers go even farther, building their subjects from scratch. Dwight Eschliman created the photographic time capsule shown here—a note-perfect facsimile of a family room from the 1980s. As Eschliman jokingly explains it, he and his San Fransciso-based crew of designers did it “because we were looking for an excuse to listen to Journey.”

When i was a little girl, my mother was an assistant curator at the Natural History Museum in Raleigh, NC. When she brought me with her to work, I would spend hours in its diorama room. These exhibits are both fascinating and macabre; I think of them now as a relic of our troubled coexistence with nature.

In his Flickr stream, Andrew Evans (www.flickr.com/andrewevans) titled this image “Enchanted Forest” for its fairytale-like mood. How did he achieve it? The Kent, England, amateur enumerates four strategies for finding and enhancing nature’s magic: Pick a suitable subject, get the right gear, shoot at an appropriate time, and tweak the image in software.