Shoot! At the Pretty People!
As much as I want to pepper this post with my usual [lack of] wit, I’m pretty tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night after the Wedding and Reception. Let’s just say that the wedding was delightful and wonderful, and the reception that followed was tasteful, funny, and all-round entertaining.
Congrats to Liz and Chris. My best wishes to both of you. I’m glad I got a few minutes with both of you at some point in the evening. I know you were both very busy, and I appreciate what both of you have done.
With the formalities out of the way, time to get to the meat of the post. Let’s talk about shooting pretty people!
My dear friend Jas is the co-founder of Savillian Custom Suits earlier this year. They’ve been targeting the Indian Wedding market with some success. Two weeks ago, she asked me if I can help her take photos of the Kismet Indian Wedding Show, specifically the Fashion Show portions of it. As I’ve alluded to before, this would have been the first fashion shoot I’ve done, and above all else, my first in-person exposure into the Indian Wedding culture. This was definitely an eye opener on both counts.
My only previous experience with Indian weddings is through the wild and crazy stories told by Samir. Of the little I recall from those conversations, the weddings are over the top, vaguely surreal and pretty much unbelievable [according to my standards, at least]. I still remember him telling me about a recent wedding he attended where the groom rode in on an elephant to the ceremony. I guess that’s just how they roll. Who am I to judge?
Needless to say, though, the wedding show neither disappointed, nor destroyed this stereotype for me.
When I first arrived at the Savillian booth at the show, the first thing I noticed was not the careful detail and professional displays, but rather, what I noticed was the horse in the stall across from them. Yes. A horse. A live one that blinked, kindly accepted carrots, and was generally pleased when its head was patted. Apparently, horse rides by the groom is a staple of their events, and this particular horse has seen his fair share of weddings in Southwestern Ontario. Furthermore, a horse is by far a much better substitute for an elephant here. That, and it’s near impossible to get a fully grown elephant penned up inside a convention centre.
However, I digress…let’s actually talk about this so-called photoshoot.
One of the things that struck me as I started the shoot is simply how little control I had over the situation. The runway was poorly lit both front and back. The back of the stage was too dim, whereas the front of the stage was too bright. As such, there was really only a 2.76 second window when the models walked down the catwalk where the lighting was actually reasonable. Simple, I thought to myself. I’ll just simply shoot within the window. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, however, unlike plants or buildings, models are people and come with all associated properties of being people. Namely, they blink a lot. Of the numerous photos I managed to take within the 2.76 second windows I was given, a large majority of them featured models who had their eyes closed. What insincerity and total disregard for the photographic arts!
Seriously, if we found a way to artificially prevent blinking in models, we would have significantly improved the world of fashion and fashion photography. This would be the biggest thing since discovering the use of duct tape to form fit clothing. Once again, I digress. I must apologize.
There were a number of other things I learned throughout the photoshoot. For one, I learned how heavy my camera equipment actually is on my hands. With a flash, and my hefty variable zoom lens, I found that my arm was getting tired within 15 minutes of shooting. Of course, it definitely does not help that I was constantly changing the zoom - my wrists were killing me the next day.
Note to future self: Please bring and use the tripod that past self bought to make sure this problem gets mitigated. Past self paid good money for the tripod. Please use it.
Another significant learning was to decide up-front whether to be selective with what I shot, or spend the next few weeks tearing my irises in my vain attempt at selecting and touching up the gems afterward. While I got through all of Jas’ photos this past week, I still have over 1,400 photos of the other designers I still have to comb through…especially if I want to try selling them later.
Hmm…other thoughts…
Ah yes. Photographers and videographers are great folks. They really are friendly people, and totally top-notch folks. I need to hang out with them more.
Ah…one other thing. The Flash…they do nothing…
I guess a blog post about fashion photography wouldn’t be complete without a discussion and discourse about the pretty people who were modeling that day. All I really have to say is this. They were pretty people. And no, I probably won’t share these photos with you.
I guess this entire post begs one single question: Is Fashion Photography something I’d be interested in doing professionally? In all honesty, I can’t say right now. There are a lot of reasons I liked doing this photoshoot that might not be the case any other time…I was doing it for a friend…it was all very fresh and new to me…the people there were very friendly. Further still, I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to do this kind of stuff again. I mean, yes, there’s still Toronto Fashion Week, but that’s a whole different issue…and I certainly don’t feel I’m good enough to play in that field yet.
So the short of it is that the shoot was fun. The people were pretty. I got a whole lot out of it [and judging by the amount of post-processing I've done, I'm still getting a lot now.] If the opportunity comes up again, I wouldn’t say no. But for now, I’m just happy to take pictures of things that don’t move as much. They’re much easier to do
Train’s just pulling in to Union. Should get home soon and start laundry…
Another fun and busy week ahead. Who knows what will be in store for me though!
Later days…
Sam
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