So I shot my annual fashion show…the one I’ve been doing the past 5 years. It’s always in early Spring, so I tend to use it as a warm-up for wedding and portrait season, and also to test new equipment. I titled this post “Even *more* lessons learned” because I’ve blogged about fashion photography lessons learned in a previous post.

Honestly, my favorite part is capturing back stage candids (my *next* blog post will feature my back stage photos and lessons, so stay tuned…). Photographing the show is mostly a matter of workin’ the equipment: bam, bam, bam! Sure, this machine-like gun operation of my camera and lenses is a relatively good way to see what the equipment can and cannot do, but it’s not particularly creative. That said, I do tend to look for something other than the straight on, one model filling the frame types of shots; it makes it more interesting for me.

Anyway, this year I decided to shoot the whole show (well, OK, I was only there until the first intermission) with one lens and one camera. In previous years, I’ve shot with two cameras, one connected to a 24-70 zoom lens and the other to a 70-200 zoom lens, and stood about 8 feet away from the end of the runway (i.e., quite near it) with 20 other photographers.

My plan this year was to stand further back on a small step ladder with my 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens attached to my new Canon 1D Mark IV that I wanted to test out. I placed the ladder adjacent to the corner of the stage where in years past, the models came for their final poses before returning back up the runway.

Unfortunately, the show organizers decided to switch things up; they decided to have models end up at the “other” corner of the stage before returning back up the runway. I, of course, didn’t realize this until the show started and I saw what was happening.

So, lesson learned: talk to fashion show organizers each year about the planned “traffic pattern” on the catwalk because it may not stay the same from year to year. It’s not always easy to find a fashion show representative who actually knows this sort of information; but it’s worth the effort. Also, if you see a designated show videographer in some optimal, cushy location near the stage or on an elevated platform, you can be pretty sure *he’ll* know!

Anyway, I didn’t want to stay at the transition corner; I wanted to be at the final posing corner. So I moved my step ladder in the aisle toward the other stage corner. Well, wouldn’t you know that someone in the audience was pretty darned annoyed at where I was standing on my ladder and told me so.

Because I didn’t really want to be yet another annoying photographer getting in everyone’s way, I crouched down the rest of the show (well, the rest of the first half of the show) and took many photos of the models on the stage with audience heads creeping up ever-so-slightly into the bottom part of the photos, sometimes obscuring the model’s feet. This wasn’t optimal, obviously, but some of the designers and models still bought my photos; so it wasn’t a total wash.

What worked and what would I do differently next time?

First, I still like standing back further from the stage–than the other 20-30 photographers taking close-ups of the models right *at* the stage–and using one camera and one long telephoto lens (for me, the 70-200 f/2.8 IS). This allows me to more easily get photos of the models almost anywhere on the stage and they don’t all of to be close-ups. I noticed one photographer was sharing the stand the videographer was on, which was in a perfect location of my one telephoto lens strategy. I’ll have to do some sucking up to the videographer next year…:p.

Compared to last year, instead of shooting in manual exposure mode with a fixed ISO, I shot using auto ISO. The lighting on the runway is quite uneven; so a fixed manual exposure doesn’t work too well, unless you’re only taking photos at the end of the runway. Even then, there are differences depending on where the model is standing. I’ve noticed when I’m shooting with a longer lens, the camera does a better job with exposure because no one part of the scene–which may be quite a bit darker or lighter than the rest of the scene (this commonly happens when the model is wearing white or black clothing or has particularly pale or dark skin)–dominates the frame as it does when you’re close up.

I should explain a little more about my camera setting: I was using a Canon 1D Mark IV, which allows you to put the camera in manual mode, but with the ISO set to Auto. The great thing about this is that you can put the aperture and shutter speed at some fixed settings (e.g., f/3.2 and 1/400 sec) and let the camera adjust exposure by raising or lowering the ISO. In effect, it’s like you’re able to shoot in both aperture priority and shutter priority simultaneously. I found that keeping the aperture relatively large (f/2.8 – f/3.5,  mostly to keep the ISO from going too high) and the shutter speed relatively high (1/200-1/400 sec, especially when photographing the models *while* they moved down the runway) worked out quite well.

If I didn’t have a camera that does auto ISO in manual mode, I’d probably shoot in aperture priority mode and keep the shutter near it’s max…again, if I’m using a relatively long/telephoto lens.

That’s it for now. My next blog post (within the next week) will feature my back stage photos and lessons. In the meantime, I’ll finish this post with a few more shots of the show (click on the thumbnails to see them larger).

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