Will Robb Photography

After another week or so of being busy and being exhausted (in a good way) I thought I’d make the effort to write a blog before I crash out for the night, so maybe more of an emphasis on pictures rather than words this time, maybe a few tips here and there as well.

So, as the title suggests, this blog is about the recent Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo 2012 S/S which I was once again very happy to be covering for Tokyofashion.com. As the site continues to grow at a massive rate, they had another photographer, my good friend and colleague Michael Steinebach cover a lot of the shows. Between the two of us we covered most of the shows and got the images off pretty quick, I think we were definitely the fastest English language site to have the images online after each show. All of the shows Michael and I covered can be seen over at Tokyofashion.com, but I’ll post up some here I liked as well.

So, how do you go about shooting fashion shows? First up, apply, prove you are actually a photographer working for someone (which didn’t work very well considering some people were taking up valuable spots in the press pit whilst shooting video on hand held iPhones). So you apply, usually online, then if you get approved you get one of these passes which gets you into all the shows:

After that, you have to work out a schedule of who’s shooting which shows over the week. I ended up doing 24 shows, taking about 15′000 photos and sending about 1500 edited photos to Tokyofashion.com. On the first day I only had one show, Paul Smith, but after that averaged on about 3 shows a day but ended up doing 6 on my last day. The shows were held in different venues over Tokyo, so I traveled light, my 5DmkII, 7D, 24-70mm lens (which I only used for one show) and my 70-200mm f2.8L lens. In the back of my bag was my old Macbook and I always had a monopod (old school image stabilisation) and my step ladder. The step ladder was the cheapest bit of kit, but in some ways the most important. When running between shows you sometimes arrived to an already crammed press pit, having the best camera and lens in the world won’t let you shoot through a pit 5 people deep and tiered, however a cheap step ladder lets you climb up above everyone else and shoot

I guess I mentioned it on a previous blog about fashion week, but this is basically how the workflow for shooting shows goes:
1. Arrive as early as possible to get the best spot in the press pit.
2. Guard your spot with you life, but also try to make sure everyone else isn’t going to be inconvenienced. If I was at the front, I would sit on my ladder and be down low. In the middle, I would stand and shoot over the people in front, at the back I stand on my ladder and shoot over.
3. Work out the White Balance. This is essential as it saves lots of time editing. Autowhite balance is pretty good, but it’s just a bit of software. Fashion shows don’t have uniform lighting, some have tungsten light mixed with fluorescent light, some even have natural light coming in. You need to work out how many Kelvins you need to get the correct exposure on the clothes. Canon 1D series cameras can take readings off a grey card which helps, but most shows have a rehearsal and someone walks out with a grey card, you shoot it and adjust the settings on your camera until the card looks white, Usually a tungsten setting (around 3200 kelvin) was spot on. After each show I had 50-80 pics to edit and send, I don’t want to adjust the WB of each.
4. The shows starts, ideally you want two-three crops of each model; full body, 3/4 body and then if the back of the costume is interesting, put one of them in too. Also, at the end of each show try to get a good shot of all the models coming out again as the crowd (hopefully) applauds.
5. Pick a spot on the runway and shoot only there. Usually the light on a runway changes a lot along it’s length, where the model comes out is darkest and at the end of the runway it’s the brightest. I usually go for shots near the end, it’s easiest. People with a 400 mm f2.8L prime often shoot at the far end, so no-one but the model is in the frame.
6. The money shot for full body is when the models front foot is placed firmly on the ground and their back foot is rising. When I first started shooting fashion I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but some of my friends who knew what they were doing pointed this out to me and I learned quick that this is what makes a shot look good. Front feet rising get cut straight away. Saying that though, I have seen a few big fashion mags ignore this recently…times a changing perhaps? To get the money shot, I usually shoot around 10-15 frames per model, usually on rapid burst (or as rapid as my camera will go, 3.8fps for the 5DmkII and 8fps for my 7D).
7. Make sure the model is in focus. Sounds obvious, but a lot of people mess this one up. You need a high shutter speed, all my images were a minimum of 1/250th of a second, for very bright shows I would do 1/500th or more. I let the aperture set itself, usually it was between 2.8-5.6. For tracking, I used AI focus as my drive.
8. After the show, get the images of as quick as possible. After each show I would literally run to the nearest press room ad start downloading and editing, sometimes the downloading to my Macbook would be in a taxi between venues. As soon as my images started to download I scan for the best images from each model, edit where need be (usually only cropping and straightening). As soon as I had edited and I had net access (usually in the press room) the images are sent. Sometimes within 30 mins of the show finishing, at most 1-2 hours. Every night after the last show I downloaded and edited on my train home and sent the images as soon as I got it.
9. Drink lots of espresso to keep you lively, eat when you have time.
10. Celebrate the sending of the last images by having a nice beer and a fine whisky. Then catch up on sleep.

I used my 7D for a couple of shows, I prefer it for runway as my 70-200mm lens becomes a 112-320mm lens. Also it has great fps. However, after ISO 640 I personally find the high noise levels in images a bit too much for my personal tastes. Some people ramp it up to 3200 and use it. For me, I find that I won’t put it over ISO 640, if I have it there and the shutter speed can’t be 1/250th of a second or more won’t use it. This time around there were a lot of dark shows, more than half the time I was needing ISO 3200 and for that the 5DmkII really is great, the photos look as good at 3200 on it as photos at ISO 400 on my 7D…actually, even then my 5DmkII has better. After a while I just used the 5DmkII straight off the bat. To be honest though, all the best runway images come from Nikon users. Nikon really kicks canon’s ass for low light photography. Can produces high end cotton to Nikon’s silk in that respect.

So much for the not writing much, I’m pretty bad at keeping these blogs brief. Enough of my waffling on, here’s some of the photos I like. Mostly of the models, but from the Paul Smith show my favourite was the man himself jumping about at the end of the runway. The shows were all very different, some had regular everyday clothes, some were conceptual, each venue was different, but once again I really loved being there and getting to shoot. It’s a tough gig, I was on the go all day, usually in bed at 2am and up at 8am to go start again, sitting in the dark waiting for shows to start, shooting, editing, repeating several times whilst running around Tokyo. By the end of each day my eyes wouldn’t work properly, but I really had a great time once again. Here are some shots from some of my favourite shows:

Shiroma
EOS 7D + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 640, TV 1/250:

Paul Smith
EOS 7D + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 640, TV 1/250:

Ato
EOS 5DmkII + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 400, TV 1/250:

A degree fahreneheit
EOS 7D + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 640, TV 1/250:

Banal Chic Bizarre
EOS 5DmkII + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 1600, TV 1/320:

Christian Dada (my favourite, the clothes were wild and the light was so subtle it shimmered over the designs….beautiful)
EOS 5DmkII + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 3200, TV 1/250:

G.V.G.V
EOS 5DmkII + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 400, TV 1/250:

Junya tashiro x Sachika
EOS 5DmkII + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 160, TV 1/250:

SASQUATCHfabrix (a “pop up” show)
EOS 5DmkII + 24-70mm f2.8L and off camera flash

Motonari Ono
EOS 5DmkII + 70-200mm f2.8L, ISO 3200, TV 1/250:

Roll on Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo 2012 A/W collection in March. Shortly after that we move to Scotland….