Fashion Intensive Workshop Powered by Aftershoot

I recently presented a fashion photography workshop at an estate in the Poconos area about 2 hrs outside of NYC. I had applied for the Aftershoot Create Together Fund grant after reading about the program on an Fstoppers article. My event proposal, the Fashion Intensive Photography Workshop, was one of the selected programs to receive a grant which helped pay for the spectacular location and model fee for a beautiful and experienced model.

The focus of the workshop was creating editorial fashion concepts and shooting with an eye towards layout submission in the new crop of digital fashion magazines. I had one great model in Keilah and put her through four outfits on a number of villa garden backgrounds.

Since we were graced with bright hazy light on the afternoon, we didn't need additional lighting. I had some diffusers and scrim ready but in the end we didn't need it. For this shot I used a combination of the garden fountain and an artist painted backdrop in combination. We had set up several angles to show off the different outfits.

I presented my own methodology for developing editorial concepts emphasizing combining inspirations with resources to create authentic fashion photography layout series in a format that aids magazines and art directors constructing interesting fashion editorials. In addition to the more theoretical lecture presentation, I demonstrated my image composition, fashion shooting, and model directing technique with Keilah and encouraged the participating photographers to get quality images of their own.

One of the points that I demonstrated to speed a fashion shoot highlighted lens selection. I typically shoot 70mm and longer on fashion shoots to reduce distortion. In many cases I am shooting with my 70-200mm zoom. On full length shots, I generally set the camera height between a model's hips and shoulders. When I need to shoot multiple crops quickly, I will typically crop for the full length position with my 70mm which allows me for a quick transition to a close up shot by zooming to 200mm.