Fashion Shooters, I Bow In Your General Direction (4 pics)

[StMarc]

I invited myself to do photography for the owner of a boutique called EuroTrash, who was participating in a four-store club coture fashion show, which was held at a club called "HardDrive" (it's in the Hyatt Regency) downtown.

(I was going to post a funny story about the evening but I decided to just cut to the chase.)

Show started late - 12:45ish, was supposed to start at 12, thank Eris I got to sleep in yesterday. (I had a wonderful talk with the promoter and she told me, as I had guessed, that these things ALWAYS start late.) Models were Elite Runway models and they were having fun.

Edit: Here are the models.



I rented a 24-70 f2.8L for the evening: it's fast, but it's an older lens and the AF had fits in the low light.

This is what the lighting looked like sans flash:



However, my experience at a belly-dancing recital with the World's Worst Lighting Scenario served me well and I knew how to use my on-camera strobe to get what I wanted. Also, there's this... thing... over the stage which is perfect for bounce flash. Here's a shot with bounce flash and partial direct. Remember, this is in the SAME lighting environment as the previous picture.



This is the part where I bow to you fashion photographers...

Man, that camera got heavy!

With lens, battery pack, and flash, it probably weighs close to five pounds. And you can't use both hands to hold it when you're working the controls. And the models were bam-bam-bam: no time to lower it for a second and relax my arm. And the lighting changed literally second by second: I was using my hand to control flash output on a per-shot basis!

But I toughed it out. I did sort of envy the club photographer, who was shooting with a Fuji FinePix point-and-shoot camera with popup flash. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] There were a couple other photographers there, some of whom had equipment comparable to mine. I have no idea who they worked for or if they worked for anybody. Ah, mystery.

I also met this girl, speaking of fashion photographers. She's 19, she's an Elite model, and she's also an Elite *photographer.* I hate her. Or at least I would if she wasn't so darn NICE.



But sore arm and all, that seriously ROCKED. I'd do it again tonight. What a rush!

M

[lobofw]

Being use to on the fly adjustments, I can relate. Good job, those are nice.
I actually like the 2nd for some reason, maybe the lighting, except for lack of facial feature. But, I know the scenario there.

Arenas have the worst light and guess where the action is going [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[RonC]

Looks like a fun evening was had, thanks for sharing. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[AllenS]

Gotta love the challenges involved with shooting Fashion Shows. This one was an outdoor event for a local charity. Due to the seating, I was forced to stand 50 feet back from the runway which itself was nearly 50 feet. So I put the Nikon CLS to work for me with an SB800 on camera and 2 SB600's on small stands up near the runway (one stage left and one stage right). I was amazed that both off camera flashes fired consistantly even though one was 70 away in an outdoor setting. Here are a few shots from the evening.