A model shows off a dress made by a student at Stephen’s College for the ‘Fall Into Style’ Fashion Show at Commerce Bank. The dress was made out of recycled gloves and an old wedding dress to promote awareness in that “everyone has a hand in fighting breast cancer”. The fashion show featured styles from local downtown boutiques and dress designs of recycled materials by Stephen’s College fashion students followed by a raffle and open house, trunk shows, and refreshments at downtown boutiques with proceeds from any sales benefiting the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation. Stephen’s College and The District sponsored the event.
Critique
This assignment was emotionally hard for me. I felt I was up against every technical challenge known to man: how do I control such harsh shadows, how do I hold the flash and take pictures (and that won’t blur), where do I bounce the light, who will finally let me continually flash them for an hour, not much news worthiness out there this week, why did my autofocus not work right. But I felt the more I practiced, the more I began to understand flash, and I was able to understand proper placement of the flash. It’s certainly tricky trying to figure out where to bounce the flash. For some reason, most of my pictures are blurry and the auto focus lever on my camera got moved to a different setting. I didn’t realize those images I wanted in focus were blurry, as it was focusing on the other stuff. It was quite discouraging when I downloaded the pictures onto my computer!
For my first shoot, I shot at the ‘Fall Into Fashion’ Fashion Show. It was held in the Commerce Bank, which had very high ceilings, and there was nothing in there that had adequate walls or floors to bounce off. So I knew I would have to shoot with off-camera flash. I put the flash on manual to practice the distance ratio and F-stop equivilants. I found it to be a helpful exercise. But I was also frustrated that my flash didn’t recharge more quickly, and that I couldn’t stabilize my camera very well, only having one hand and all. I found most of my pictures to be underexposed, because I shot too early when the models were too far from me. I couldn’t open my lens any wider, and since the flash didn’t charge as quickly, I found I lost out on pictures that were better framed and more visually interesting.
At my next shoot, I shot the house chefs at the Alpha Phi Sorority house on the MU campus. There wasn’t much lighting in the kitchen, so I thought the flash might overpower and produce some harsh shadows. So I put the camera on TTL. Most of the kitchen was covered with metal, so I bounced off of it, but felt there was a grey cast to the skin. I then started bouncing off of the chefs white jackets. This seemed to cast softer shadows. I think I got some visually interesting pictures. But this was the shoot that my autofocus lever got moved from what I was used to working in, so many of my pictures are focused on the wrong things or are blurry.
My final shoot was at Bluestem Crafts. I felt more relaxed with this shoot, because the women I shot were very willing to help me. I approached this shoot by slowly myself down and worked through the process more slowly. I felt I could do this, because there were few customers coming in and out of the shop. I shot both in TTL and manual, and I shot on and off camera (mostly off). However, although there were white walls, they were covered with many colorful things, and the ceilings were too high and colored black. Trying to bounce off of something became challenging, so I pulled out my white card, but found that most of my pictures had harsh shadows and hot spots. I did try to turn down the flash for less power output. I guess I am still just confused by the process of it all.
For my selects, I chose those from my first shoot. I picked the picture of the two chefs, because I felt that it was visually interesting, was adequately exposed, and the flash did a good job highlighting without overpowering. This was my bounced select. I shot this at F5.6, 1/125 at 100 ISO with TTL bounced flash (off of his jacket), and with a 28.0mm lens. I shot directly to the left of the men. I decided to bounce off of his jacket because where the men were directly working, they were surrounded by grey metal and it was producing greyish skin tones. The walls and ceilings weren’t good to bounce from either.
I chose my other select, the girl in the dress, because I felt the light created from the direct off camera flash the feeling of being at a fashion show. And although, I’m not particular happy with the deep shadows around the shoulders (I think I should of waited just a little longer for her to move closer to me to produce the correct angle and shadow and to evenly distribute the light on the dress), the light enhances the cause of the show – breast cancer awareness. The dress was made out of recycled gloves and an old wedding dress to promote the cause in that “everyone has a hand in fighting breast cancer”. I shot this at F5 at 1/125 at 100 ISO with a 50 mm lens. This was off camera direct flash. I was to the left of the models in the middle of the runway. With this shot, I was down on the floor sitting, trying to stabalize my camera with my elbow on my knee, while raising the off-camera flash high over my head hoping to highlight the entire dress with light.
