Fashion Show Tag

15 May

Posted at 16:55h in Events, Shoots
matty_5.13.11_ 364 They are hectic, exciting, sexy, exhausting, exhilarating, and chaotic all at once. I'm talking about fashion shows. Sure, sitting out by the catwalk waiting for the show to start, everything seems normal, maybe even down-right boring, peeking to see when the models will start to strut their stuff. Well, the pre-show catwalk is the ying to the backstage's yang. Ironically, the backstage is where I wanted to be to capture the Fashion Night Out event that London Couture was hosting. It was the busyness, the prep, the inside look into what goes into a fashion show, but at the same time, snag some seemingly calm images of the models before they hit the runway. I spoke with the owner of London Couture, Tina London, a couple days before the event, and was able to snag the backstage access. I knew there was going to be a herd of photographers there to click away on the catwalk, but if you know me, you know I'm always out to get the shots and the look no one else is getting or thinking of.

19 Dec

Posted at 14:38h in Events
matty_12.5.10 064 I covered a fundraising fashion show for Swish, a salon in downtown Tacoma. It was short and sweet, but a lot of cool hair and makeup concepts, the people at Swish definitely are on their game. It was my first visit there, so I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. It's a cool place, has a nice, fresh vibe as you enter. Lots of fun colors and things spread around the space, a location that I'd actually like to shoot in. I spent a couple minutes taking shots of the staff getting the girls ready. I've started taking a new approach with covering events... As much as I like to not use any lighting for events, as I feel that it's much more of a documentary approach to the photography rather than a staged shoot, but a lot of the times the lighting is just bad. Let me take that back... not bad, but terrible. Lighting is either so dim that I have to make adjustments to the camera to counter, and I get grainy images, or the lighting is really harsh, forming terrible shadows on the subjects. This location was half and half, the salon area had decent lighting, but the runway location what about the worse I'd ever seen. Hence the first time I started working with an assistant roaming alongside me with a light. More specifically, a hot shoe flash unit stuffed into a 2' x 2' softbox. Lots of people and busyness, so no light stands here. We were moving too quickly, so Alice, my assistant, hand-held the lighting rig. This gave me incredible flexibility and speed to execute quick, off-the-hip shots that turned out pretty good. Shots that look nice and crisp, and allowing a bit of lighting control over my rather out-of-control environment. If you are interested in this highly mobile lighting stuff, I have a post coming very soon that goes into great detail on this topic (also happens to be the same setup I used for the shoots on the Maui trip). Now back to the event...