Throughout the month of November, our Photo of the Day series will be taken over by each of Rangefinder‘s newly minted 30 Rising Stars of Wedding Photography in 2019. The 30 honorees are featured in our November issue, and each of their full, 30-photo submissions, reviewed by the competition judges, can be found in our online gallery. For more behind-the-scenes insights, follow us on Instagram.

The duo Sirjana Singh and Benjamin Lane of Tinted Photography stay away from universal presets and edits applied for consistency’s sake. “We believe each love story brings to the canvas its own set of colors,” says the New Zealand-based duo.

In fact, colors play a primary role in their work, which they describe as anthropological in nature and holistic in approach. They try to be present for every stage of a couple’s wedding planning process. They’ve created stationery, tagged along for dress shopping and helped brainstorm ideas for the bride and groom’s surprise celebrations. “We do this because art is deeper with genuine connections,” they say.

Below are their behind-the-scenes insights on three of the photos from their submission this year.

Sometimes things don’t work out as you had planned. We only had about 30 minutes to take this rad couple’s portraits together. Luckily the sun had come out for them, but the wind was still blowing a gale and we really wanted to use some smoke in this secluded pine forest that we were exploring together.

We set it up, waited for a break in the breeze and lit the fuse. As is usually the way with these things, the wind picked up and the pink and purple smoke from our flares began to stream past our couple’s knees… Bummer! We kept shooting while the flares cooled off and then it was time to drive back to their reception.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and we were determined to save this shot for our couple. We began in Photoshop by cloning the smoke from other images in the set but it just wasn’t what we were looking for, so after some trial and error, we hit on the idea of cutting out the smoke we did have in the shot and stretching it for this effect. We were chuffed with the outcome and, of course, our couple was too! It just goes to show that in this amazing creative industry of ours, a little problem with the weather can make way for a whole new look.

Every time you visit waterfalls, depending on the weather, they could be much larger than the last time you were there! On this morning, we were up and on the road with our couple long before the sun was. We parked our cars and made the trek and a small boat ride to the base of the falls, just like we had the last two times we had adventured in this insanely beautiful spot.

This time, however, we had had a week of rain leading up to the day and it was obvious that we weren’t going to get anywhere near the falls without getting totally drenched in icy water. We discussed this with our couple and we all decided that we had come this far, and the falls were just incredibly breathtaking, so we were going to push on.

We began as far back as we could from the base of the falls in an attempt to get used to the feeling of glacial melt on our faces this early in the morning. It wasn’t easy, but we kept making our way closer and closer to where we wanted to be to catch this frame, stopping along the way to take photos and then wrap Joyce in a warm jacket!

In a situation like this, communication and empathy with your couple is just so key. You have to know how they are doing for real and make sure they are warm and comfortable so that when you do finally get to that perfect spot, they are still loving the adventure and, of course, still loving one another through all the squelching shoes and drenched hair.

We pride ourselves on what we can create in the days and weeks after we have hugged our goodbyes and put down our cameras. It’s the digital age, people, and as photographers, we are no longer confined by the limitations of our gear in the field. Wedding images are about conveying emotion to an audience and now that we are here in the future, we have a whole host of new ways to do just. Because we have embraced this way of thinking, it has changed the way we think while we are on a shoot.

These two beautiful people were eloping together, and we really wanted a way to describe this adventure of a lifetime they were on with just one frame. By discussing it and thinking in “layers,” we believe we came up with something very special for them: their past, present, and future at that moment, all there in one frame.