The dress... and trashing it!

Just about every photog's dream. Beautiful special dress... let's do some crazy stuff with it! I met Amy at a promotional event for the spring edition of Fashion Fridays - Madison's biggest fashion event, which I have shot for 3 shows now. Anyways, we were talking and she mentioned she had done a trash the dress shoot and my eyes got big. She said the dress was still fine so we could use it to shoot another. Yay! But she lives 2 or so hours away. We'll have to plan for the next time she's in town after the fashion show. Our first attempt ended quickly as a massive storm was moving in. Just fired a couple and then watched the city start to flood. We debated but with her long car ride home didn't feel it was worth it as she said she'd be coming back down soon. The idea bombs started exploding but what would I actually be able to pull off without ruining the dress and not being able to shoot anymore knowing we'd end up at my favorite spot in the lake. Since it's such a special event, I decided to use the video function on my K-7 and whip up this little BTS video for ya. Enjoy!

Shadows and Surf and using one hard light

I've been doing a lot and I mean a lot of water shoots. It's risky taking your gear into the water. I've had two hot shoe adapters snap now, used to connect my Cybersyncs, and luckily both times I wasn't in the water so the flash unit has fallen on land and has not broken. Yes, it rattles a bit now but still works A-ok. Nice to trust $300 of equipment on a $5 attachment. Always have to consider the weakest link. I've made some mods and have tethered my flash to the stand and rigged a more stable connection between flash and umbrella holder. I use one light, hard, because I can't risk having anything that becomes a sail with the wind and have it die in the lake. I've recently thought about getting a water proof bag but worry about the heat from the flash and shooting in 80+ degree weather and high humidity. Hopefully soon I'll do some underwater shoots after I get my waterproof DSLR bag. So the natural light portion of the post. I've started a shadow project inspired by ANTM. Hold a drape, patterned fabric and let the sun cast shadows onto my subject. I made a behind the scenes video for one of my shoots. The second half of it is one of my water shoots. It doesn't show when we venture further out into the water but you get the gist as far as variable shooting conditions and shooting without an assistant. Enjoy!