In Part I of this series, the focus was on Mens’ fashion; now let’s see how we can make runway headshots of women models walking as fast as their Manola Blahnik stilettos will let them.
100-yard Stare. Although a few runway models will play to the photographers, most look forward in a detached sort of way making anything resembling a standard headshot difficult, especially with dead symmetrical framing such as this.
Off the level. Cropping tighter and tilting the camera add more interest and produce the kinds of framing used in studio headshots or traditional portraits. When I made this and similar shots, a young fashion shooter asked me if I “always shot on an angle.” I told him “nobody told me I couldn’t; I just go with my feelings.” You should too.
Most fashion shooters work with the same kind of long-focal-length lenses and wide f/2.8 apertures used by sports photographers, but the 50-200mm Zuiko lens I used has a maximum aperture range of f/2.8-3.5. The Olympus E-1’s 4/3 digital format’s cropping factor converts this into an effective focal length of 100-400m–ideal for runway work, including headshots. Shooting wide open minimizes depth-of-field throwing distracting backgrounds out of focus, but I was stuck with ISO 400, and that’s what I used for shooting more than 1100 images. Fashion pros tell me they shoot 3000 runway images during a typical day.
For fast moving subjects in low light situations, autofocus is indispensable and I set the Olympus E-1 on continuous AF mode so I wouldn’t miss a shot. These models are walking briskly toward or away from you, so a fast shutter speed is needed to keep them in sharp focus. I placed the E-1 in Shutter Priority mode, selected 1/250 sec, and set the camera to make an exposure regardless of whether focus was confirmed or exposure was deemed “correct.” Nevertheless, the number of underexposed or out-of-focus shots was minuscule based on the large quantity of images I made. Sure, a few images were soft because of my inability to hold the 50-200mm lens steady, but another trick I learned from the pros (a bit late as it turned out) was “bring a monopod.”
Wide open apertures, here f/8.0 at 1/250 sec with the Olympus E-1 set on ISO 400 and the 50-200mm zoom set at 200mm (effective 400mm) focal length. The bright white satin outfit caused some underexposure but Adobe Photoshop was used to bring the exposure back in balance between skin tone and texture in the outfit.
Since the vast majority of images made at a fashion show will be verticals, some kind of camera grip that provides a vertical shutter release is a welcome ergonomic addition. During Fashion Week, Olympus provided an on-site masseuse to perform chair massages to help ease the working pro’s aching backs caused by schlepping gear and hoisting big, heavy lenses, but the package of an E-1 and 50-200mm lens never put a strain on my muscles.
The vertical grips for the E-1 also provides space for a larger, high-capacity battery so you could shoot all day and never worry, but even without the grip, the E-1 never let me down power-wise. Olympus only claims 300-400 shots for the standard battery, but at the camera’s default setting I’ve gotten more than 700 from a single charge.
Look at the Camera. Not! Profiles work as well as full-face photographs. Legendary portrait master Don Petersen used to say that better visual dynamics were created when the subject’s head was pointed in a different direction than the body.
I initially decided to shoot all the images as uncompressed TIFF files to maintain maximum image quality, especially since the E-1’s write speed with a Lexar 4GB CompactFlash card is the same for the highest quality (compressed) JPEG file that Olympus calls SHQ (Super High Quality.) A 4GB card gave me the ability to shoot 999 TIFF files. Later in the day when I had a chance to shoot more designer’s work, I switched to the auxiliary battery pack with vertical shutter release and used SHQ mode to capture more images. Olympus claims it can provide 600-800 shots, but I never ran out of juice. All of the men’s fashions shown in the last lesson were made in SHQ mode while the women’s headshots here were made as TIFFs. Is there any difference?
Keeping in mind that this is a pre-production camera, SHQ files had some subtle but noticeable noise in shadow areas that was not as apparent with TIFFs. This was more of a problem with full-length shots where the model’s face occupies a much smaller part of the frame. In postproduction I applied The Imaging Factory’s (www.theimagingfactgory.com) Noise Reduction Pro Photoshop-compatible plug-in to minimize or eliminate noise. For model’s headshots, any difference in TIFF and JPEGs up to 8×10 size was negligible.
Blondes have more Fun? Blond-haired models are easier to photograph in dark venues like this hall because there is light both on the front and back of their hair, providing lots more separation. None of the images in either part of this story were cropped and are shown full frame. Manipulation was limited to moderate color corrections and brightness adjustments. What looks like a vignette in the bottom of this frame is the head of another photographer who got in my way.
Bracketing? Fuggedaboutit! There’s no time. As soon as a show starts, take a quick look at one of the images on the camera’s LCD preview screen to make sure you’re exposure is in the ballpark, then shoot in short bursts in Continuous mode.
When there was even a tiny break during the show, I checked the exposure of the images on the E-1’s 1.8-inch LCD screen and made adjustments ranging from 2/3rds stop less exposure to 1/3 stop more. The halls are painted different colors; some have black walls, others are white, providing some fill. Final exposure tweaking was done in post-production using Adobe Photoshop’s Levels (Image>Adjustments>Levels) command. Another indispensable Power Tool was 20/20 Color MD from Phototune (www.vividdetails.com), a Photoshop-compatible plug-in that lets me control dynamic range, shadow and highlights, as well as fine-tune color balance.
All photographs ©2003 Joe Farace
Joe Farace is Colorado-based photographer/writer who has written or edited 24 books and 1300 magazine stories. You can see more of his fashion and glamour images at his SmugMug page at
http://farace.smugmug.com.
