But my point is this, are we really shooting for the "perfect" exposure every time? Or are we shooting for an image the evokes an emotion, that "speaks" to us and to our clients?
There are many situations when we can "nail" the exposure, and we should, but I think this image is a great example of the impossibility of getting it perfect.
If I exposed for the bottom half of the dress (which is blown out), the top half of the dress would be way too dark (essentially I would have ended up with a picture of half of a dress and nothing else).
If I exposed for the interior of the church (which was as dark as a cave), the bride would be so blown out she would simply be a big white blotch.
What I went for was getting as much of the bride as I could and all else be damned.
When I first got into photography... oh how I would go crazy when taking an outdoor shot and trying to preserve detail in the sky and my subject at the same time, then it (finally) dawned on me one day, "does the client really care what the sky looks like in this senior portrait?".
It was then that I started asking myself better and smarter questions, what's the subject of my shot? What's important to my client? What do they want to see?
So when my bride sees this picture will she be disappointed with the blown out area of her dress? Will she wonder why the inside of the church is so dark?
Or will she smile because I captured the feeling of her walking through the door of the church and was able to bring her back to that moment of that day?