Omar Mansoor Fashion Show at Runway Club

This was the last show in the Fashion Meets Music tour and the one that yielded the best images although the evening wasn’t withot a few technical hitches. Thanks are very definitely due to Ande from the Dilema Agency for all her hard work and efforts, not only thoughout the tour but especially for this event.

As one might ecpect with night clubs, the environment is dark and Runway was especially so as the next sequence of images show

Continue reading Omar Mansoor Fashion Show at Runway Club »

Overthrow Band…

Overthrow Band
Overthrow Band

I’ve been doing a lot of band shoots recently. Makes a nice change from photographing female models and has really helped to come up with fresh ideas and styles of image.

The first group was the Overthrow Band, depicted here. These images were made on that bitterly cold weekend just before we had our first dump of snow for the season. It was -5degC when we made these images and between shots the lads were running in rings around me, literaly, in order to keep warm. Continue reading Overthrow Band… »

Funky Buddha kicked my backside

Working a nightclub fashion show was always going to be a challenge. Let’s face it, they’re not the sort of place that is renowned for brightly lit runways and clean white backgrounds. Quite the opposite in fact. The three I’ve worked in recently were dark. Very, very dark. When the show started, they all turned what little lights they had on way down.

E.g. The shot at the top of this page from the Agnes Valentine set at Funky Buddha was a full three stops darker during the show than the rehearsal (second image).
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Low key…

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Low key, edgy portrait

I’ve wanted to try my hand at making this shot for a while now but have been unable to make it happen until my recent shoot with Tumi.

It was actually far more straightforward than I had imagined too.

Tumi was actually sitting on a bench in the street for this shot. If as night though which helped a lot. She was lit by a single 580exII with a grid (1/8″ Honl SpeedGrid) and I’d feathered the light to just kiss the side of her face. She had to sit really still for this shot. The light from the speedgrid is pencil thin and the slightest movement could ruin the shot. Nevertheless, she carried it off very well.

The speedgrid is definitely a must have for any strobist. They’re versatile, quick and very simple to use.

 

 

 

Greenwich…

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Tumi, sunset over Greenwich

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to receive an email from Tumi, a student at the London College of Fashion asking if we could work together on a photoshoot. I’m very glad she did too.

We threw a few ideas around and settled on an autumnal theme, with the aim of catching the golden light around dusk.

On the evening of the shoot we were very lucky with the weather, thhe sky offering up those sunset. To get the shot I placed Tumi on the beach, underemployed the sky by a stop out two and lit her with a 580exII firing into my shoot through brolly. I really struggled with the PocketWizards that evening. The Mini simply wouldn’t trigger the flash so I had to rely on the a second Flex instead. Even that wasn’t perfect but it was much more reliable than the Mini. I have to say though that this was the one and only time I’d had a problem of this nature. My only guess being interference from the boats on the Thames.