Ok, guys, now this is serious stuff. I have just been booked for my very first fashion shoot for the weekend of 16/17 April. This is not just any old fashion label though, it is actually for an agency. It is a kids agency, and they want me to shoot 40 kids over two days for their z-cards, portfolios and the agency website. I know that it might seem like "small fry" to many of you, but to me, this is absolutely huge. These guys are on the Gold Coast and this is the mecca of modelling/acting for Queensland. It is equivalent to SoBe in the US. If I do this well, not only will they use me for their future stuff, but they will hopefully recommend me to their clients, and this could mean big biccies. Not only that, but I will be making around AUD$1200 profit from these two days work, so my rates are improving, and that will come in extremely handy with GFM only a few weeks away.
I am not sure how much I have mentioned this to you all before, but fashion is my aspiration. I used to model myself, and my dream is to one day shoot for the large fashion houses and agencies and to be invited to attend the likes of New York and Paris fashion week. (Ssssh, don't tell anyone, cause I know it sounds like I have tickets on myself if I say that too often). This is why I offer make up artistry, and costume design etc with my shoots as it keeps my skills up and keeps me up to speed with the latest trends etc. During my trip to the US, I will also be spending a few days with a good friend who is a very well known fashion photographer in NYC and who can pretty much single handedly take the credit for me becoming so passionate about photography in the first place. When I first purchased my very first SLR back in 2000, he saw what he calls "potential genius" in my (then VERY bad) "stuff", and I used to send my unprocessed rolls of film to him and he would hand process, and hand print and send them back to me (for free!), telling me honestly if something was total crap, or if it was potentially good. Anyways, I digress... The reason for this post is to ask for your help. Since shooting with the *istD, I have had MAJOR problems with blown out highlights. I shot a wedding last weekend which was on the beach at 11am and almost every shot with the water in the background is totally blown out. Likewise, when using flash, I am having alot of overexposure problems too. And then, on the other hand, a blown out shot will be followed by a shot that has a blue sky and for the life of me, I can't figure out what it is I'd done differently. Now my biiiiiiiig concern and problem here is that I will be shooting the kids for this agency for two full days over a Saturday and a Sunday. The light will be varying alot over the time and they will all be shot on the beach! Here is a link to the type of images they will be expecting: http://www.kidzmodellingco.com.au/agent_enter.php?viewpass=Tal3nt#b1 How am I going to do this? They booked me from the images that they saw of the little girl that I shot the other week (the one with the curly red hair - http://www.tanyamayer.com/avagallery/index.html ), and also from my other images on my website. They know what I can do, and I know that they haven't booked me from word of mouth (ie somebody else saying "oooh, use this girl.." and then them having waaaaay high expectations etc), it was exclusively from my previous work. But, honestly, after this last wedding which was also on the beach and with similar lighting conditions to what this shoot will be, I have really lost confidence in myself in a major way. I presented my client with just over 300 average looking proofs. Some were ok, some were downright crap. I came home with 450 shots on my CF cards, and this 450 were culled down to the 300 that I offered them. I probably deleted another 50 or so during the course of the actual days shooting. I am not TOO concerned with the "strike rate" (I am kinda over that now), but I am concerned about the blown out highlights. The guys wore white shirts which were an absolute disaster to try and expose. The bride wore a dark pink dress (thank god!), imagine if it had been white, I would have been totally up proverbial the creek. Here is a link to the gallery so that you can see what I mean. I am probably shooting myself in the foot by showing you these, and you will all think that I am positively hopeless and a clueless rank amateur at the very best, but I guess I'll risk it in the hope that I'll learn something here... http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/emeleus/index.html I will be working with 40 children, over two days. This means I need to work FAST. I probably won't have more than 30 mins per child, so I just won't have time to be mucking around with checking histograms, and preview pics etc. I NEED them to work first time, every time. So, I need to know WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?!?! Why can't I get correct exposure of both the foreground (shaded) objects AND the brightly lit background when I am using flash? I can't present my client with images of 40 children with underexposed faces and nicely exposed backgrounds, and likewise, I can't present them with images of blown out background but perfectly exposed faces... If I use an ND filter won't that underexpose the foreground objects? What about a polariser (how does a polariser go with flash use?)? Come guys, dig into your deepest, darkest pits of knowledge and someone please offer me an answer, cause I am PACKING it here! tan.
