Thursday, April 29. 20102010.03.09: Avenue Spring Fashion FeatureI was hoping to make a bunch of chronologically-ordered posts but I figured it may be a good idea to get this entry out before the current issue of Avenue Magazine Edmonton is off the stands. We were originally scheduled to shoot a week earlier but due to some scheduling conflicts we moved the shoot to March 9th. Capture was destined to be all digital so the later shoot date didn't seem to scare Paige Weir, our art director, as much as it sometimes does when I try to convince her that I should be shooting 4x5's or film rangefinders or something similarly de-evolutionary. Makeup by Adrianne Thomson, hair and styling by Nikolas and assisted by Jacqueline Ohm, music on set by Corey Thompson, and Craig Hobbs and Adam Goudreau assisted on the photographic side of things. Julie and Jessica are represented by Sabrina Notte and her agency, Deja Vu Modeling International of Red Deer, Alberta. Nikon D3X loaned to me by Huy Sam and Manfrotto Autopole/Expan system loaned to me by Curtis Comeau.  I first saw Kayla in the parking lot behind my studio last year. She was dropping off promotional supplies for a beer company that she represents to the pub on the main floor when I spotted her in the parking lot as I was moving some paper up. I told Corey, who happened to be at the studio. I needed Corey to convince me that I would regret not getting her number to shoot her in the future and Corey did what I hoped that he would do. I got her number and a year later she ends up on the cover of Avenue Edmonton.
 This photo was my favourite from the yellow dress set but another photo was chosen for the cover. Shot with the D3X and the 135 F/2 Defocus Control Nikkor. Key lighted with a 22" Norman beauty dish and sock with centre dome in place, filled with a Chimera Video Pro Plus large strip, and rimmed with a Chimera Video Pro medium softbox with Lighttools 20degree Soft Egg Crate from the right all driven with the Norman D24r and Norman IL2500 heads. Background lit with a bare reflector on a Bowens Esprit Gemini 500. Avenue Edmonton April 2010 cover.
 Julie modeling one of the outfits that didn't make the cut. It's one of my favourites from the shoot. Hopefully Nikolas will notice this entry and leave comments as to where all of this clothing is from. Similar lighting to cover but shot with the 70-200/2.8 VR Nikkor.
 Jessica modeling another outfit that didn't make the cut.
 This outfit actually made the cut but with a softer facial expression for Kayla. Jacket by L.A.M.B. from Thread Hill. A scarf from She Matters is being used in the model's hair. And I love the suspenders but don't know where they are from.
 A less weird shot from this set made it to press.
 Another outfit that didn't make it to the magazine.
 The collar on this coat was such a pain. It wouldn't stand for more than a few seconds on its own but I think that Julie made it look as good as it was going to look in photos. It looked great in real life.
 A shot from Craig's Leica M3 and 50mm Leitz Summitar on Ilford Delta 100 processed in stock working solution of Kodak XTOL but then fixed in stale fixer. I should have done a clip test before fixing. A certain someone who was working for my studio had significant loss of working solution when they used it introducing a lot of air into the bottle which I suspect caused the premature failure of the fixer.
Those reading this entry from Edmonton know of the difficulties of doing seasonal shoots or swimwear within the city. It's May 2nd and we are just starting to see buds on trees. Spring content easily needs to be shot a month or two before it is meant to circulate so outdoor shooting options are non-existent. There are few indoor shooting locations so we often resort to shooting on background papers. Paige saw a photo from another shoot with a light blue background and while that shoot was done with a white background and then just colour tuned to have a cool cast overall, we managed to find a decent match for the colour in Savage Paper's Mist Blue. To give the shoot a more summer-y look, the photographic team created a lighting design that was fairly low contrast without being too flat or boring. It was a fortunate decision in a number of aspects. Adrianne chose to use makeup products that looked "wetter" or sometimes metallic and would otherwise be very difficult to photograph properly had the lighting been more contrast-y. Her choice of makeup seemed to be something that Nikolas rarely ventured into because of his concern for the guys handling the lighting and the camera but Adrianne's more aggressive makeup choice paid off in what I feel is a fresh and glow-y look that worked very well for this shoot. Choosing to use Huy's D3X may have been a mistake. Not a mistake in that the camera failed to perform but that the D3X lent little to the shoot save for a nominal sensitivity of ISO 100 and a reverse-boosted ISO 50. The larger files contained little to no additional image data and while tethering to a desktop we often saw backlog of images of up to a minute. But to be fair, I recall not turning lossless RAW compression on until after the shoot was done. In the future continue to use the D3 for tethered commodity type fashion shooting. And now with the drum scanner fully installed I am tempted to try some high throughput fashion shooting with some film SLRs and rangefinders if the need arises for a black and white shoot or something that could benefit from interesting chemical processing. Comments
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Below you'll find a one-sided discussion of the results of several hours of planning spread over several weeks. We reviewed, or rather, Paige reviewed and I suggested numerous models for this shoot and she finally settled on three beautiful and extraordinary models who had the unlucky fate of having to meet us early at the studio with two of the models coming from out of town and shooting with us for a solid nine hours. Most of these photos didn't make it to the magazine but you can see low resolution versions of the files in the article on 
