Shooting Fashion (Again)

Asia - Fashion Editorial Shoot
Originally uploaded by Ame Otoko

A little known fact about me is that when I was in college, one of my dreams was shooting fashion in New York. Looking back, I have no idea how I came up with this idea and how I intended to make it happen. I did, however, work at a portrait studio part time and shot for a high school yearbook photography studio after that, so I had access to the equipment I needed and put together a modest portfolio that was never going to get me to New York.

Fast-forward to today and I have realized that if there is money to be made in the portraiture business, you must also gain an edge in your presentation. And no style of photography is quite as edgy as fashion.

To me, fashion is about wardrobe, styling and location all coming together to create a theme. The best fashion photographers know instinctively what a model should wear, how a model should be made up and what location to shoot in. A mistake can be as tragic as wearing a polka dot tie with a striped suit.

Recently, I shot my first fashion shoot in, well, let’s just say a very long time. The model is a friend, so she was easy-going and generally went along with whatever I wanted to do. I had her pick wardrobe and she selected a very elegant gray dress.

I selected a location that would work with the elegant, classic style of the dress. At our local college, I found a couple of newer buildings which combine a modern architecture style while embracing the historic style of the rest of the college which was built in the late 1960’s. I picked specific locations with a lot of glass, concrete and steel, which I felt complimented the wardrobe style.

Finally, once I got the images home, I chose treatments that were cool (as in blue hued) with muted tones, that gave the pictures an even more retro-modern feel. A couple of the close-up images I decided to do in B&W as I felt the dress had a classic style that would work well in B&W.

Being able to shoot fashion is another tool a photographer can use to add to the style of images he/she can deliver to a client. As I found out, it takes practice and experimentation to come up with great fashion images, but in the end, it was a lot of fun and I’d like to be able to do more in the future.

Here are a few of the other images we captured on that day.

Create Your Own Sunset Light Using Flash

Like Sisters
Originally uploaded by Ame Otoko

It’s late in the day and you’re ready for that golden light of sunset to sweep in so you can catch some beautiful shots. Except for one thing: you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and the only thing sweeping in is the early evening summer fog. Goodbye sunshine.

That’s when the strobes come out. To create this artificial sunset, I placed my Nikon SB-600 on a stand behind my subjects, pointed back at the camera, and slightly to camera right (more on this in a minute). I added a 1/2 CTO gel over the flash. CTO stands for “Color Temperature Orange” and is primarily used to balance your flash when used in conjunction with tungsten lights (which are also orange). The idea is if you match your flash color with the color of the ambient light, you can set your white balance to compensate for both and get a normal color tone.

But CTO gels can serve another purpose, which is to recreate the warm glow of sunsets. You may not find yourself balancing tungsten light very often, but if you live in a place where sunsets are unpredictable, you can always put your gels to good use in this way.

With the flash pointed back at the camera and covered with the gel, I turned the power down to 1/16. The effect is most evident on the warm bright highlights on the subjects’s hair. However, keep in mind this is a one strobe shot. I also had to get some of that sunset light to fall on the face the subjects.

To do this, I simply put a white reflector just off camera right. Remember the flash is turned slightly toward the reflector as well, so the bounce of the flash nicely and evenly lit the faces of the subject.

You could experiment with 1/4 and 1/8 CTO filters also, as I ended up toning down the orange tones slightly in Lightroom. But the point is being able to make your own sunsets in any weather, anywhere. Try it and see if your clients don’t love it!

When Complete Failure Is Still Success

Portrait - A. above Marin Civic Center
Originally uploaded by Ame Otoko

I was practicing my portraiture the other day, trying out some new equipment including a Honl honeycomb snoot I was anxious to try out. The trouble started when I realized I introduced too many variables into my day.

For starters, after a long shoot over the previous weekend, I neglected to take my camera out of my bag and take care of the basics: reset all my custom settings back to normal, change the nearly dead battery, check to see if all my gear was put back where it was supposed to be. This is a rookie mistake and one that is easily preventable by a little…um…non-laziness. Consequently, my ISO was locked at 1000 on a day the sun was blazing overhead in a cloudless sky. Was I going to have overexposure problems? Yeah, probably.

Second, I was working with a model I had never shot before. She wasn’t really a model, just a friend standing in for me as a favor. I had to pose her, and she did a great job considering I was too worried with my camera settings to give her any real instruction.

Next, we shot in a location I had never shot portraiture before. I had shot it as an architecture subject, but it turns out you need a permit to shoot portraits inside the building. The permit woman kindly, but firmly, informed me of this fact and sent us packing. The new location was outside the building along the roofline, which she had said was okay without a permit.

Now I found that I left my flash remotes at home. I could still fire the remote flash using the Nikon Creative Lighting System built into my two Nikon SB-600 flashes, but I had been practicing the last few months using manual flash settings, so scrolling through the CLS menus on my camera was unfamiliar turf for me.

Finally, was the introduction to the Honl honeycomb grid itself. I had no idea how this thing was going to work, what settings the flash should be set on, and to be honest, I made some really dumb mistakes.

Consequently, I didn’t get any idea how to use the honeycomb grid and of the 50 or so shots I took that day, I picked 2 as passable (with a lot of help from Lightroom).

How was this still a success then? I learned a lesson about photography. To be brutally honest, a lot of lessons, which gave my ego a bit of a beat down, especially when I’m supposed to be a semi-pro and I looked like a fool in front of my model. Had this been a paid gig, I would have lost any chance for future jobs.

I didn’t learn how to use my honeycomb grid, but I did learn lessons in preparation, diligence, and location recon. These are the boring, bland things that photographers do to make themselves look good in front of clients, yet the difference in the impression is huge. I’m glad it happened that day, so I don’t need to make the same mistakes again.