A former college recently contacted me on Facebook and asked me to cover a fashion show at Trois-Rivières. He wanted photographs for the Mode Ô verre magazine. I confess to not having been full of joy face to this opportunity that was offered to me. I'm not very interested in fashion. The only fashion shows I had seen in my life were those seen on the internet with bizarre outfits. If my daughter Claudia hadn't been there, I probably would have simply refused the offer. She was very excited to attend this event and convinced me to accept.
The show
The show was organized by students from the fashion marketing program at La Flèche college in Trois-Rivières. The fashion show presented the collections of 12 local companies, namely RW&CO, ITMPL timeless boutique, Mercerie de luxe, S3 Maurice, Lilliane G Hayes Collection, Slak, Wanderlast, TOPTOP, MLcreation, la belle saison, Quartier General, Vêtement L and New Age Avenue.
What a great personal enrichment it was! The outfits were sometimes young, colourful, simple and practical, nothing weird at all. Just beautiful! There are even a few pieces that caught my attention enough to want to get them for this summer.
Second nice surprise, the model was different sizes, heights, ages, genders and colours. We were far from the 6-foot models, double zero as the only model. I found this fantastic! In addition to promoting beauty within the diversity of the human body, it made clothing more accessible to everyone, including me. I was twice as happy when I showed the pictures to my youngest daughter who thought her shoulders were too broad to be a model.
I don't know if it's a common or an avant-garde practice now, but bravo!
Photography
Initially the lens suggested was 70-200mm with a tripod. Except that on the site, the photographers had no space although a media pass was assigned to us. We were therefore five photographers in about 10 square feet, not to mention the cameraman who did not hesitate to block our view if necessary. In addition, the parade being a banquet style, the models paraded through the tables and therefore the public was everywhere. So I had to adapt myself. I left my tripod and changed my lens for the 24-70mm one.
I took about 1000 photographs, each model was shooting several times at different distances. I concentrated on framing them entirely in order to clearly see each piece of clothing or accessory they were wearing.
Did I like it?
No! Not as a photographer. Why? The creativity in these photographs does not come from me, from my work, but from the designers, which makes my job less inspiring. I think I would have preferred to do an advertising shooting with two or three models in order to be able to play with the locations, the angles and the lights.
Then, the post-processing of 1000 photographs kills all the magic. About 300 of those 1,000 photos were deleted because the model was looking down at the floor to place themselves where a piece of tape told them where to stand and take the pose. The thing is, it looked like they had their eyes closed and I eliminated all of them for that reason.
I may be taking too long in post-processing, but I don't like showcasing missed shots. So I sort, reframe, make sure there isn't too much noise in my photos. This time the distractions were everywhere, a head, a photographer, coffee glasses, the emergency exit sign, etc. All this made the task longer and more exhaustive.
Finally, the fact of not having been able to use my tripod limited the quality of the image that I was able to do, and that disappointed me a lot.
In conclusion
It was a great fashion show and I'm more open than before to this kind of event, but not so much as a photographer. Not according to this formula anyway.
I also realized that I didn't know our Quebec designers and that unfortunately, I'm not really an exception. So I decided to subscribe to these 12 designers, just to start somewhere and find out. And you? Do you know your Quebec designers?