Parys in Dirtbin
the subject in Paul's email
Alumni
(or past 2009 student) Paul Reichle [PR] shared
his experience of a Fashion Shoot with me via gmail so that I could blog it. PR's blurb: "The shoot was for a local designer Bianca Kim _ who sells her stuff 'Miss Religious' at the I-heart market and a couple boutiques too. Bianca wanted a
Grunge feel and sent me a pic of the location she had in mind which
blew me away. I had no idea there even was a mini eiffel tower living in
Dirtbin.
Upon arrival at the location we realized that the ladder we bought to the
shoot was too short so I borrowed one from the Church next door. We got to the roof and had about 12 looks to get through - The wind was
pumping which made working conditions difficult_ constantly blowing
hair into the models face and my lighting equipment. My assistant
(I advise that everyone has an assistant especially when working on
location) had to hold all the equipment.
I was aiming for a mix of styles with this shoot as Bianca's Target
market is girls aged 16 to about 30, i mixed a combination of lifestyle
in with editorial fashion- l strongly believe that lifestyle shots are
great to sell a product such as clothing as prospective clients can
picture themselves in the clothing, if the clothing is too fashion
orientated it could be too intimidating for a young girl.
I used a very harsh light source - no softbox or diffusers so as to stick
with the very moody feel we were going for and then shooting on manual
mode - I underexposed the scene by about 2-3 stops to make the background
very dark and eliminate or put less emphasis on any unwanted elements - such as the buildings cars and shops in the background. I
then pumped a very powerful flash at high power onto the subject making
the model pop out into the picture. I asked the assistant to keep the
light quite high and close to subject in order to make harsh shadows
under the models chin - making the pics look quite raw and giving
dimension and shape.
Problems we encountered while shooting: Models found it difficult to balance on the beam and walk on the
corrugated roof which made posing tough, I also ran out of battery on my
lights toward the end of the shoot and had to tone down the power of
the flash as we finished up."
Paul attached some images and they were specifically chosen by him to show:
(below) ---> "how crazy the wind was"
(top) ---> "how dark the background is when the flash goes off and other shows the sh*!!y (Paul's words not mine) the background looks without the flash".
(top) ---> shot with toned down flash.
(top) ---> the lifestyle element
We went on our annual 'ice-breaker' to the Durban Ice Rink on a hot humid but rainy Febraury Friday. A couple of students took photo's with DSLR's, other 'snapshot camera's' , iphones and other cellphones. Shene emailed me all her images. It was also Nthabs's birthday. She turned 20. Sorry to Sne and Sam,
first years for their injuries... I hope that will not stop you from
trying again next year.
