Fashion photographers are traveling all the time from one country to another one, from New York to London, Milan, Paris and other points east and west to shoot the latest models in fashion shows. Shooting fashion shows is a fun experience and can be challenging.
If you’re interested in shooting fashion shows, we have a few tips to help you get started in your fashion show shooting.
Table of Contents
1. Prepare
Adjust your light. Moving subjects and low light are not a suitable combination, so try to understand the environment. If possible, talk to the lighting engineer and ask him about the actual show light. It would be a good idea to go to the venue ahead of time and shooting fashion shows. Getting in the Backstage can be hard, so if you don’t have the commission to go there, then search on the internet in advance or at the event. This can give you the chance to capture some great images of all the preparation. Models like to be photographed and are often so pleased to help you get the shot you want.
2. Organize a schedule
It is recommended to create a schedule before start your way to shoot a fashion show. Figure fashion shows during fashion events, ask if a designer retiring this season? Is this the first collection for a new art director? Which celebrity models expected at this show? Ask yourself questions according to your goals for the fashion show.
If you are working for a specific broadcasting, you may be on their list for show requests, but if you’re working for yourself or just uploading for your portfolio, you can create your schedule according to capturing attractive shots.
3. Choose the type of the Camera
Cameras, which allows you to change the settings manually, are considered the best type for shooting fashion shows. In other words, your device has to be a DSLR or a mirrorless camera.
One of the most important DSLR settings for low light that you have to arrange is the ISO of your camera. Most fashion show events can be completely dark, so don’t be hesitated to use any number between 500 to 800.
This allows you to shoot with higher shutter speed. Be careful not to go any higher than the values discussed before because you’ll face the risk of image noise.
After that, switch your camera to Aperture Priority and choose any value between f/4 to f/1,8 or f/1.4. This can blur the fashion show background, so subjects can be seen better by the viewer.
Choosing Aperture Priority allows your camera to choose the shutter speed automatically.
Nonetheless, it’s still important to make sure that your shutter speed doesn’t drop below 1/60th of a second. If this happens, you’ll end up with motion blur. If your shutter speed dip below 1/60th, increase your ISO until you reach the mentioned setting.
4. Choose the right lens
Telephotos are the best lenses for shooting fashion shows. As they allow you to shoot near even if you’re far away.
As previously mentioned, not all the shows permit you to bring a big lens with you if you’re not professional.
But what if you can’t use a telephoto? In this case, try a small kit lens, it will let you zoom in and out while shooting. This gives you more freedom to shoot despite where you are.
The only negative aspect with kit lenses is that most of them can only go up to 70 mm. This means that it doesn’t have a lot of zooming power.
To solve this problem, try to sit near the catwalk. This way, you still can shoot great photos.
Also, you should take in account both focal length of your lens, and its maximum aperture size too. That is to say, determine how wide can your optics go.
It’s always better to choose a lens that can go up to f/1.8 or even f/1.4 since they’re perfect for shooting in low light. Lenses which have these aperture values are known as fast lenses because they let in a lot of light.
Therefore, they let you shoot with fast shutter speeds even in a place with low light.
5. Use Manual (or aperture-priority) exposure mode
The major fashion shows at New York are generally had quite lit, thus a shutter speed of 1/250th-1/500th of a second at f/4.0 performs well to shoot the models while walking and give an approximately shallow depth-of-field. Adjust your ISO to get these settings. But be ready to modify any one of those settings fasts and automatically there won’t be light in the photographer’s stage because lighting may not be the same from one part of the stage to another part.
6. Shooting Fashion Shows from Multiple Angles
Walking around the fashion show stage while the show is going on can be difficult because you may interrupt other people watching. But of course, this doesn’t mean you don’t have to move at all and sit in one place.
You can look for another seat and search for different location in the show brake time. Have the opportunity to look for another location. You can also sit close to the stage and photograph from near.
But be careful not to block other people while shooting photos, and assure to be in the position you’ve chosen before the next show begins.
If you can, try to take some shots from all sides; the front and up .This gives you the chance to shoot and have a collection of different pictures to choose from.
7. Increase your ISO
In the few past years, ISO performance on DSLR is improved extremely. It may be annoying to push up the numbers because we are afraid of the terrible noise slipping in, but no worry about this. Now, almost all cameras have this noise, but they have a great solution for solving any noise that may appear. Some photographers set their cameras to around ISO 1000. By doing so, no noise issues at all.
8. White Balance in shooting fashion shows
If you go to the show of fashion early enough, remember to check your white balance and exposure settings before the show starts. An important thing for most shows is adjusting the Kelvin temperature to between 3000-3200K. In the case of having mixed lighting, you may like to switch to Auto. White balance insanity is a good case for shooting RAW.
9. Focus on the Eyes when shooting fashion shows
When shooting fashion shows, it’s important that your subject be sharp all the time. And if you want to make sure that you are doing it right every time, then focus on the eyes. This is really useful when using a shallow depth of field.
First of all, go to your menu and choose Continuous Focus Mode. This step lets your camera keep your subject sharp even when it’s moving.
It is so simple, half-press your shutter and the lens will keep refocusing as your model is walking along the stage.
Fortunately, cameras now feature eye detection, so you don’t have to worry about making sure the eyes are sharp.
But what if you don’t have a new camera, Then instead of that, you can use the focus and recompose technique. The only thing you should do is to move your viewfinder until your focus point aligns with the subject’s eyes.
When the eye is in focus, move your frame until you get a balanced composition. After that, press the shutter to capture the image.
10. Don’t importantly use the widest aperture
You may believe that photographing at widest aperture in a low-light condition is the regular way of overcoming the speed and light problem. Actually, we figured out that our depth of field is much shallower, and we will lose the smallest details in the outfits. For example, with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, it won’t be fine to photograph any more open than f/4. Don’t forget, what important is to be as sharp as possible. When you zoom into the eyeballs of a model, you will realize after the shoot that it was a great thing to do. The distinction in sharpness can be between the maximum aperture and one a couple of stops smaller.
