A Blog Just in Time for the Holidays: Hair M|W Holiday Party
It's the holiday season and as busy as it gets for an event photographer. However it is worth finding a spot in the day to finally write and launch my blog and get an opportunity to talk a bit more in depth about specific projects, talk about photography in general, or just share a bit of my life behind the camera. Also a way to make the site a bit more playful and give it more dynamic content other than the constant gruelling effort of updating this or that other portfolio piece. The busier you are the more stories to tell, so from the top of the wave, here is my first story.
Hair M|W Holiday Party
I had the pleasure to cover the Hair M|W Holiday Party on Thursday December 4th. We started before openning doors in what is probably my favorite part, the getting ready behind the scenes action. The fluid situation called for some quick ole hot shoe speedlight reflected via card and bouncing it from the light colored walls and white ceiling, even working off mirrors. In the featured picture (above) and with the party is just about to get underway, I used a back courtain flash and used the low speed and the abundant light to really bring the model up with very pleasant results.
A few rooms with very different lighting conditions where the talented stylist at Hair M|W get the models ready for the show, the "staging area" is a very well lighted room, white ceiling and off white walls. Hot shoeing an old SB800 still means packing quite a source of light, with the advantage of being able to reflect that light and difused from almost every angle, specially in the styling area, it was like shooting under a giant lightbox.
Santa showed up but not your classic white bearded kind, this party spiced Santa up a few notches without leaving the prime time TV stage standards. Here seen with Anne Bocci, from Anne Bocci Boutique & Gallery who dressed the models.
Hair and make up stations showed very different lighting, the make up area had more focused lighting and allowed with less surfaces to bounce light from, allowing shadows to form.
Designers and models, groups, host and patrons, the party is fully under way, and as you go from room to room, and lighting and angles change, this makes you have to revise settings, it's the closest I have been from my guitar classes, aperture compensation mode and the TTL on the speedlight, things happen very quick, so the adjustments have to be kept to a couple keys, a bit like rock and roll. The back courtain flash turns to a fill light to favor higher shutter speeds as the crowd moves quick and I get too many moving parts to the puzzle.
Bellow a few more moments of the evening, models, designers and patrons, a great event and great fun to shoot. Thank you for your attention, more to come.
