'Don’t forget to shoot the details Mark' – If I hear that once a day I hear it a million times, if not from the client then from myself. These are quickly shot during the day, just like on a real wedding. A long lens allows me to work quickly, but the lighting needs to come from a slight angle to show more texture; if the light source is over my shoulder the detail on the material will be flat and not three dimensional.
3.30 Location 3 – The Museum
A few minutes' drive from the university building is the National Museum of
Wales, our third and final location of the day. It’s an awesome building,
with huge columns and a location we use often for all kinds of shoots from
families to graduations.
The final dresses in the collection have been selected especially for this
location, as they seem to lend themselves to the classic setting. The museum
has an exquisite light quality at the end of a day, which is enhanced by the
overhead and side subtraction of the light by the building itself. The
lighting skills I use here are no different from a wedding shoot, as the
location lends itself perfectly to a 45-degree lighting pattern, due to the
apertures formed by the pillars.
Image – 13 45degrees
By placing the model slightly backward of the aperture of the pillars, the light is subtracted enough to create a window-type of lighting, the style we all mimic in a studio every day as the pillars give a feather edge to the light and hence specular in its quality onto the subject. This also helps with any reflection of light off the dress, minimising any burnout of detail. Turning the torso away from the light source, which is so typical of a female portrait pose, can further protect this detail.
Image – 14 Aperture of light
When detail is so important as with this part of the collection, the aperture of light from the pillars gives a direction to the light source which makes any fine, material detail jump out of the photograph, whether it is a full-length shot, as in this image, or close-up. My exposure is always taken towards the light source from the subject's face, with a light meter, so as to accurately set the exposure manually on camera. In this case 1/200 at f2.8 for 100 ISO.
6.15 Shoot finished
After a long day, with all the shots in the can, it was a quick 'thanks and
good-bye' to the client and off to the train station to drop off the model
and stylist.
7pm Download at the studio
Even though the day was done for everyone else, I spent the next three hours
downloading, editing, processing, backing up to DVD and then proofing to
disk for the client. Very little work is done in proofing, only the odd
tweak in exposure to compensate for slight changes in the sunlight or when
tracking with a reflector. The images were changed to monochrome via a
pre-set in Adobe Camera RAW, so the client was able to start making their
selection the very next day.
Post Shoot Finishing
About four days after the shoot I had the first order from Angela and it's
then I really tweak any slight flaws in the image and the dress sample, like
a crease or a seam.
Image – 15 Detail
If I feel I need a little more detail in the dress at the order stage, I will open several copies of the same image from RAW with less and more detail as required, by adjusting the exposure of each. This is a bit like an HDR technique, but by hand in Photoshop where I will use the detail from the different exposures of the image from RAW to bring back fine detailing.
Image – 16 screen shot
So that’s it, a diary of a fashion shoot – the world of material and hair is a glamorous place to work, at least for the first few years, but unless you are the principal photographer you will soon get fed up with airports, hotel rooms, the early starts and very late finishes. For the past 15 years, with the exception of a few of my old clients, like Angela, fashion is now no more than a portrait session with a stylist and assistant(s) not forgetting a good-looking guy and/or a beautiful girl, both of whom need none of my attention until the shoot starts and none of my time when the shoot is finished.
This year we will be filming the next Blue Shoot for PhotoTraining4U.com and I can’t wait!
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