Fashion Shoot With F5London

Hi again 🙂

So it seems I either post sparingly or throw caution to the wind and bombard the internet with posts. Maybe I’ll get the right balance one day. But then again where’s the fun in that?

Anywho, I’m very excited about this post (although I think I say that for each post lol). But, no, this one’s quite exciting. I’ve wanted to explore specific areas of photography, i.e. street photography, portraiture and lifestyle, because that’s where my passion and interest seems to fall so it was awesome to receive a call from F5London to help showcase their prints & designs in a look book. This was one out of the two Fashion shoots I did this week; the other will be posted after this at some point.

I have to say I had sooooo much fun with this it’s craahaaazy. The weather was lovely (albeit a little on the windy side) and considering I literally got the call the day before, the location and outfits all fell into place very well. Also the client was very open which gave me ultimate creative control.

I’m not going to say this was an amazing shoot in terms of my work because as you’ll see I could have gotten more crisp photos and in some cases could have done better for lighting but it was a relatively new terrain for me (the only other fashion shoot I’ve done is the BlazerBoys shoot a couple years back) and I certainly gave it my all. It was an awesome learning curve.

To avoid loads of initial reading I’ll pop in and out between the pictures and elaborate on them if necessary.

There were 3 outfits for the day and 4 sub-locations. Attendees were myself, the client and the model who was also fairly green. Kit taken with me were my Canon 7D, Canon 35mm F2 and my 5 in one reflector.

This shoot needed to emphasise the textures and patterns to each dress as opposed to just how the dress looked on the model so I had to bear this in mind with each shot.

Outfit 1 – Scene 1

The first outfit was the yellow dress. It had a summery, fun vibe to it and I thought it would be good to get the model near the river. I, having never used the reflector (I’d been waiting to use this for ages), opted for the gold side but it was such a sunny day and the model was already wearing yellow so I realised soon that this probably wasn’t the best choice. That was lesson no. 1.

Lesson no. 2 was that on a very sunny day like this, proper lighting was crucial and I dropped the ball on this one in my excitement. It’s only when I was processing the pictures that I realised (Uh Oh) the model’s face wasn’t well lit. Next time I’ll look into using the reflector more effectively, possibly using fill in flash or maybe even a soft box.

Lesson no. 3 – I need to make sure I’m taking sharper shots when it comes to portraits.

Outfit 1 – Scene 2

I quite liked this scene / idea; it was suggested by a friend (wish I’d thought of it!). We got the model to a grassy sort of area which had lots of greens and yellows to it and suited the theme of the dress quite nicely.

Outfit 2 – Scene 1

Next up was the green dress and the big splash. I really liked this one because it was a random find. We were roaming about looking for our next ideal location and I spotted a fountain which I thought would be quite nice with the outfit. It was a grassy area too so that complemented the colour of the dress. I used the reflector but this time the silver side which was much better but it was very difficult to actually get the light reflecting – I definitely have to learn to use this properly; lesson no. 4.

As were taking the pictures I thought it would be nice to get the model making a big splash with the fountain. This was probably the longest scene to shoot because we needed to control for the wind (it was very windy at this stage), hair, and water that was splashing about whilst maintaining the right pose. Some of the pictures below are sort of bloopers but there was an element that I liked to them that I wish we had captured in the final photo. Ideally I wanted a very playful laugh whilst the model splashed the water but we stuck with a straight / gazing face instead.

I really enjoyed capturing the splash and freezing it on camera. I had my settings on Av mode and because the day was so bright and sunny, Shutter speed was very high – about 1/2000th sec.

Outfit 3 – Scene 1

Finally we had the blue striped top coupled with a pair of leather tone trousers (model’s own). This outfit was probably the one that came out the best to our surprise. By this time I think the model had become a lot more comfortable and she was giving me some werk! A lot more fun poses came out although there was still a struggle with facial expressions at times. We used some pillars as the background and it worked really well with the colour of the top. Because this top was longer at the back than the front, it was important that this was emphasised in the shots and thankfully the wind was on our side. We got some nice shots with the wind blowing the back so it lifted up.