Had an interesting assignment a few weeks back for the newly-launched weekly X Factor magazine. It was for a ‘street fashion’ section of the mag called Your Pop Style, where young ladies are plucked off the street at random (by the fearless Rosie) and then quizzed on who influences them fashion-wise in the world we call pop. This is X Factor after all.
It was my job to snap them, and the location for this particular week was Liverpool, a city I haven’t been to for quite a few years until recently…
I have to say, since the massive wad of cash was pumped in for the City of Culture (2008) bid, it really is a smart place now, and there was no shortage of youthful fashionistas parading around the streets.
From a technical point of view, given the nature of the job it was quite quick and dirty shooting and I mainly used natural light, or a single off camera SB-800 flash firing through a shoot through umbrella where circumstances allowed. My favourite shots were the 2 in the pic starting this post though.
They don’t look like it (I don’t think so anyway) but these were actually using just available light – the biggest one there is admittedly i.e. the sun. I had the girls walk down a side street alongside a big bank of windows (out of shot camera right) that for about 5 minutes were reflecting the sun (back and camera left) in a really interesting way. You can see the shadow on the ground that the sun is creating, but the light coming off the windows makes the subject really pop, as if I was shooting with off camera flash
Shooting ‘fashion’, albeit only on the street is a new venture for me and wasn’t something I’ve really considered before, but it’s something I’ll definitely be exploring more in the future.
Oh, before I forget, here’s the tear sheet from the mag!
