LA Fashion Week
Nikolai
Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
By some lucky coincidence I got hooked up with an event coordinator for LA Fashion Week and got invited to shoot the opening event on Saturday, March 8 2008. The event took place in Club Ritual (1743 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood, CA) and lasted approximately from 11amp till 3pm.
The show featured 9 local designers.
It was my first ever chance to shoot the real fashion show, so I got a bit nervous, even though it was a relatively small scale. I recharged all the batteries (found out that one of the canon spares was dead in the process:-() and prepared all my usual location stuff. Helen kindly agreed to accompany me, even though she had to get out of her previous engagements.
North Hollywood is a relatively short drive (under 40 min without traffic), and we arrived promptly and even managed to get a nice parking spot not far away from the club.
The club itself was rather dark, with the impromptu catwalk and a huge disco ball right smack in the middle of it, so all the models had to maneuver their way around it. It also created some undesired background and and caused ugly oval shadows. I was glad I brought my PW-controlled sunpaks. I started with one yet in the middle of the show I realized I'm losing a lot of action in the back and added a second one, attaching the unspreaded light-stand to a pillar with two runs of gaffer tape.
After the show some girls asked me to take their picture separately. We found a nicely lit place in the bar area (huge skylight) by the wall fountain and take a few pictures simply with the speedlight as a fill. For some reason we got attention from the crowd, and several more models asked for their pictures to be taken there, too. In the end, these last 30 minutes turned out to be more fun that the whole show.
I hope I made some connections - I was never asked for so many business cards before. Helen did pretty well too. She started to help the event organizer, and then ended up to be a personal shopper/stylist for some spoke ladies. Everyone loved her, and she even got some nice presents from the designers (she confessed to me later that her "gift bag" would cost more than $300 should we pay for all that). She also managed to snap a few shots from the DJ booth with my 2d body and 70-200 + 580EXII attached to it.
We brought home some 1,700-odd frames, spread across 4 CF cards.
The culling process took down this number down to 1,100. I could easily trim it down more, but I wanted all the designers and all the models to get something out of this, so I left pretty much all good unique pictures be.
I also filtered a hundred of especially nice shots into a separate gallery.
Now, yo'll're dying for some pikchas, right? :wink
1. Club Ritual, where the event took place:
2. Red carpet, TV interviews, the works (btw, it was my Helen who helped to pick up the dress for her - and no, this is NOT p4r1s h1lt0n:-)
3. Despite the event's small scale, the place was packed with the people lugging some heavy metal (however only me and another older guy brought the external lights;-)
4. Model Stephanie Simpson on the catwalk (this is one of the Helen's shots with 70-200):
5. Runway moment...
6. Models lined up backstage to go for a run:
7. Model Randa Ham used her 13 years of modeling experience to turn the enemy into a friend. Instead of trying to avoid the low-hanging disco ball the used it as her prop. The crowd roared :-)
8. Talk about the lack of attitude:
9. Lady in lime:
10. Group of models in the private shoot after the show:
11. Randa (in front) helps a young girl to strike pose:
12. Randa is a ball of fun and energy. I swear, this was her idea, not mine:-)
I hope you enjoyed this little tip to LA fashion show.
More here:
Selection (100-odd): http://nik.smugmug.com/gallery/4484393_gjY2F
Complete set (1,100-odd): http://nik.smugmug.com/Events/476602
The show featured 9 local designers.
It was my first ever chance to shoot the real fashion show, so I got a bit nervous, even though it was a relatively small scale. I recharged all the batteries (found out that one of the canon spares was dead in the process:-() and prepared all my usual location stuff. Helen kindly agreed to accompany me, even though she had to get out of her previous engagements.
North Hollywood is a relatively short drive (under 40 min without traffic), and we arrived promptly and even managed to get a nice parking spot not far away from the club.
The club itself was rather dark, with the impromptu catwalk and a huge disco ball right smack in the middle of it, so all the models had to maneuver their way around it. It also created some undesired background and and caused ugly oval shadows. I was glad I brought my PW-controlled sunpaks. I started with one yet in the middle of the show I realized I'm losing a lot of action in the back and added a second one, attaching the unspreaded light-stand to a pillar with two runs of gaffer tape.
After the show some girls asked me to take their picture separately. We found a nicely lit place in the bar area (huge skylight) by the wall fountain and take a few pictures simply with the speedlight as a fill. For some reason we got attention from the crowd, and several more models asked for their pictures to be taken there, too. In the end, these last 30 minutes turned out to be more fun that the whole show.
I hope I made some connections - I was never asked for so many business cards before. Helen did pretty well too. She started to help the event organizer, and then ended up to be a personal shopper/stylist for some spoke ladies. Everyone loved her, and she even got some nice presents from the designers (she confessed to me later that her "gift bag" would cost more than $300 should we pay for all that). She also managed to snap a few shots from the DJ booth with my 2d body and 70-200 + 580EXII attached to it.
We brought home some 1,700-odd frames, spread across 4 CF cards.
The culling process took down this number down to 1,100. I could easily trim it down more, but I wanted all the designers and all the models to get something out of this, so I left pretty much all good unique pictures be.
I also filtered a hundred of especially nice shots into a separate gallery.
Now, yo'll're dying for some pikchas, right? :wink
1. Club Ritual, where the event took place:
2. Red carpet, TV interviews, the works (btw, it was my Helen who helped to pick up the dress for her - and no, this is NOT p4r1s h1lt0n:-)
3. Despite the event's small scale, the place was packed with the people lugging some heavy metal (however only me and another older guy brought the external lights;-)
4. Model Stephanie Simpson on the catwalk (this is one of the Helen's shots with 70-200):
5. Runway moment...
6. Models lined up backstage to go for a run:
7. Model Randa Ham used her 13 years of modeling experience to turn the enemy into a friend. Instead of trying to avoid the low-hanging disco ball the used it as her prop. The crowd roared :-)
8. Talk about the lack of attitude:
9. Lady in lime:
10. Group of models in the private shoot after the show:
11. Randa (in front) helps a young girl to strike pose:
12. Randa is a ball of fun and energy. I swear, this was her idea, not mine:-)
I hope you enjoyed this little tip to LA fashion show.
More here:
Selection (100-odd): http://nik.smugmug.com/gallery/4484393_gjY2F
Complete set (1,100-odd): http://nik.smugmug.com/Events/476602
"May the f/stop be with you!"
0
Comments
These are great shots, Nikolai. Especially the Lady in Lime. Great lighting, pose and everything. Runway shoots can be complicated, but that's what makes them fun.
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Thanks, Lee!
God is my witness, not all models are created equal. Some are fun to shoot/work with, and some are... erh.. plain dumb...
Luckily, most of the completely stupid ones were cast out after the first run.
I noticed the amount of wits and attitude is in reverse relation with height, although not always. The tall girls can definitely be fun, but most of the shorter ones are.
I'm sure you had a wonderful time Nik.
The girls in shot No. 6 don't look all that happy to be there?
Image No. 10 ... now these folks seem a lot happier
Like Wedding Photographers, these type of events must produce a lot of pressure for the person photographing the shoot.
It's not like you get a second chance at it if you stuff it up.
Hope you got some good contacts out of the shoot Nik,
you enjoy photographing people, glad you had a good time
.... Skippy
.
Skippy (Australia) - Moderator of "HOLY MACRO" and "OTHER COOL SHOTS"
ALBUM http://ozzieskip.smugmug.com/
:skippy Everyone has the right to be stupid, but some people just abuse the privilege :dgrin
Very true... and I have a confession to make.. I screwed up one of the runs :cry . I was shooting backstage with 580 when I realized the next run has already started. I hurried up to my spot only to find out it's taken.:bash. I found another one, at the same time switching from 580 to PW. Started clicking without realizing that PW didn't set in completely... Got a whole bunch of balck frames...
Thank you, Skip!
Thanks, Chris!
I agree, DOF on the catwalk shots may seem deeper than necessary (I shot at f/5.6).
My reasoning:
1) very dark venue (like 4-5 stops dark). Fast moving models. I wasn't sure if AF would lock up fast enough and didn't want to lose half a crop becuase of it. Btw, Helen's 70-200 was set for f/4, while she was shooting from 15-20 ft further back and boy, barely 15% of her shots survived - the rest was hopelessly OOF)
2) As you see I did have a lot of shots where I was literally just 3-4 feet away from the models' feet (pun intended), while their heads were like 7-8 feet away. I didn't want miss the legs - like, do you want these to be blurred?
Or these?
Yet I also didn't want to lose the faces:
3) And of course, since it was on full manual, once the light is set, it's pretty tricky to change it. Taking two lights down, remetering the whole thing - I simply didn't have that luxury once the show started
So, I guess, I decided to play safe... For some exceptional images (that is, if I managed to take one or two during this machine-gun shooting) I can easily fix the bg with the old good gaussian blur. After all, it was not a paid gig, and thus far none of the participants who managed to see the results did complain
Next time I'll try to go shallow maybe f/4, or even f/3.5, depending on where I go end up relative to the catwalk.
Thank you once again for the help, including WMF
My pleasure on the WMF.
I got an invite to shoot tomorrow, too (Mercedes-Benz as a main sponsor, no less:-). I'll try to do f/4 this time, we'll see how it goes.. :-)