Clothes Show Live

Went to the Clothes Show at Birmingham NEC yesterday, which is an annual event which is spread out over a few days in December. The fashion students I worked with to help create their posters for promotion invited me along and I had an awesome time.

Having spent more than enough cash throughout the morning, I decided to wander about and find a way to gain access to the main show, I finally gained a press pass which allowed me access to shoot from the press pit during the live catwalk event. The theme for the year was “A Night At The Movies” which showcased a multitude of eras documenting cinematic inspired fashions. The events production was massive and I was blown away by the special effects and the choreography that I was capturing through my lens, at one point I felt my arms slowly dropping the camera from my face, because I was so eager to sit back and watch the whole show. But I managed to keep snapping, and thankfully I did because I was quite amazed at some of the shots I gained. (uploading tomorrow as my laptop is crap and doesn’t seem to enjoy canon raw files)

Shooting in the catwalk environment was a little bit daunting, as having very – in fact no experience what so ever in this type of field made me feel extra nervous. Having dabbled with the 5d’s a few times I am becoming much more acquainted with them, but still I felt a great sense of panic as it came to shooting the event. With the setting one minute really dark and then the next there are laser lights and firework cannons flying everywhere, I literally had to keep dialing back and forth on the shutter to make sure the image could be read on the camera. My fingers have definitely experienced repetitive strain from yesterday!

I did fear that my images were just not going to work at all, and that they would be all underexposed and having such a huge amount of motion from using long shutter speeds, which would just label them as absolutely worthless. Luckily, I took a canon flash gun with me and I think this helped me gain more of a static and exposed image.

God knows what I would have done if I hadn’t of brought that with me.

The whole day was brilliant, and although I wouldn’t want to photograph catwalk as a profession, I would not rule it out completely. I thrived on the energy of the show and the rush of getting the shots, at the right time, following the models up and down the catwalk through the viewfinder, to get the perfect image of the garment that would make the item sell. I also did in fact enjoy having the added pressure of having to find a balance of dealing with the lighting situations, and having to compensate using an auto focus, as a pose to manual, in order for me to get the correct exposure balance.

Images will be uploaded tomorrow