Nikolai Sklobovsky
New member
By some lucky coincidence I got hooked up with an event coordinator for LA Fashion Week and got invited to shoot the opening event on Saturday, March 8 2008. The event took place in Club Ritual (1743 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood, CA) and lasted approximately from 11amp till 3pm.
The show featured 9 local designers.
It was my first ever chance to shoot the real fashion show, so I got a bit nervous, even though it was a relatively small scale. I recharged all the batteries (found out that one of the canon spares was dead in the process:-() and prepared all my usual location stuff. Helen kindly agreed to accompany me, even though she had to get out of her previous engagements.
North Hollywood is a relatively short drive (under 40 min without traffic), and we arrived promptly and even managed to get a nice parking spot not far away from the club.
The club itself was rather dark, with the impromptu catwalk and a huge disco ball right smack in the middle of it, so all the models had to maneuver their way around it. It also created some undesired background and and caused ugly oval shadows. I was glad I brought my PW-controlled sunpaks. I started with one yet in the middle of the show I realized I'm losing a lot of action in the back and added a second one, attaching the unspreaded light-stand to a pillar with two runs of gaffer tape.
After the show some girls asked me to take their picture separately. We found a nicely lit place in the bar area (huge skylight) by the wall fountain and take a few pictures simply with the speedlight as a fill. For some reason we got attention from the crowd, and several more models asked for their pictures to be taken there, too. In the end, these last 30 minutes turned out to be more fun that the whole show.
I hope I made some connections - I was never asked for so many business cards before. Helen did pretty well too. She started to help the event organizer, and then ended up to be a personal shopper/stylist for some spoke ladies. Everyone loved her, and she even got some nice presents from the designers (she confessed to me later that her gift bag would cost more than $300 should we pay for all that). She also managed to snap a few shots from the DJ booth with my 2d body and 70-200 + 580EXII attached to it.
We brought home some 1,700-odd frames, spread across 4 CF cards.
The culling process took down this number down to 1,100. I could easily trim it down more, but I wanted all the designers and all the models to get something out of this, so I left pretty much all good unique pictures be.
I also filtered a hundred of especially nice shots into a separate gallery.
Now, yo'll're dying for some pikchas, right?
1. Club Ritual, where the event took place:
2. Red carpet, TV interviews, the works (btw, it was my Helen who helped to pick up the dress for her - and no, this is NOT p4r1s h1lt0n
3. Despite the event's small scale, the place was packed with the people lugging some heavy metal (however only me and another older guy brought the external lights;-)
4. Model Stephanie Simpson on the catwalk (this is one of the Helen's shots with 70-200):
.. to be continued...
The show featured 9 local designers.
It was my first ever chance to shoot the real fashion show, so I got a bit nervous, even though it was a relatively small scale. I recharged all the batteries (found out that one of the canon spares was dead in the process:-() and prepared all my usual location stuff. Helen kindly agreed to accompany me, even though she had to get out of her previous engagements.
North Hollywood is a relatively short drive (under 40 min without traffic), and we arrived promptly and even managed to get a nice parking spot not far away from the club.
The club itself was rather dark, with the impromptu catwalk and a huge disco ball right smack in the middle of it, so all the models had to maneuver their way around it. It also created some undesired background and and caused ugly oval shadows. I was glad I brought my PW-controlled sunpaks. I started with one yet in the middle of the show I realized I'm losing a lot of action in the back and added a second one, attaching the unspreaded light-stand to a pillar with two runs of gaffer tape.
After the show some girls asked me to take their picture separately. We found a nicely lit place in the bar area (huge skylight) by the wall fountain and take a few pictures simply with the speedlight as a fill. For some reason we got attention from the crowd, and several more models asked for their pictures to be taken there, too. In the end, these last 30 minutes turned out to be more fun that the whole show.
I hope I made some connections - I was never asked for so many business cards before. Helen did pretty well too. She started to help the event organizer, and then ended up to be a personal shopper/stylist for some spoke ladies. Everyone loved her, and she even got some nice presents from the designers (she confessed to me later that her gift bag would cost more than $300 should we pay for all that). She also managed to snap a few shots from the DJ booth with my 2d body and 70-200 + 580EXII attached to it.
We brought home some 1,700-odd frames, spread across 4 CF cards.
The culling process took down this number down to 1,100. I could easily trim it down more, but I wanted all the designers and all the models to get something out of this, so I left pretty much all good unique pictures be.
I also filtered a hundred of especially nice shots into a separate gallery.
Now, yo'll're dying for some pikchas, right?
1. Club Ritual, where the event took place:
2. Red carpet, TV interviews, the works (btw, it was my Helen who helped to pick up the dress for her - and no, this is NOT p4r1s h1lt0n
3. Despite the event's small scale, the place was packed with the people lugging some heavy metal (however only me and another older guy brought the external lights;-)
4. Model Stephanie Simpson on the catwalk (this is one of the Helen's shots with 70-200):
.. to be continued...
