I’m a fan of donating time to help out good organisations… or organisations that mean something to me. A few months ago, Casa Cares put together their yearly fashion show to raise money for the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Local designers, hair dressers, students from Concordia being models… lot’s of good people donating their time to the cause. Oh… and me too 🙂
Shooting for free is something we need to be careful about. There are many places that just want free work. They’ll offer you “exposure” or a great chance to network with their high class guests. Be careful of these. Find the events that YOU want to donate time for, or the ones that can give you back something. I go a bit more in detail in an early blog post on the subject. Oh wait, here’s the LINK 😉
This was my second year helping out with my photography. Last year was a bit of an interesting experience, where I spent my night on top of a speaker to get a decent angle. Not fun. This time around, I chatted with the president of Casa Cares and asked if photographers could get a reserved area right in the front, and not allow anyone else to stand between us and the runway. Done deal!
I had some fun shooting the show. While I was taking the 3-4 shots of each model, I was also using my Fuji x100s to nab some more artistic shots. I probably looked a bit weird shooting two cameras, but hey, you can judge for yourselves the results (they are the black and whites at the bottom).
Gear used
As mentioned, the wide, less “fashiony” shots were with the Fuji.
The runway shots were all done with the Canon 5d Mark III and the Canon 24-70 f/2.8. The edge of the runway was close, so I rarely needed longer than 60mm. I used a monopod, even though the gear is light (for photography gear), I was there for a few hours. I’m old. My back tends to hurt. 🙂
I had my trusty little step stool with me. Getting that extra foot or so off the ground can make a nice difference.
I really do love the black and whites. Having a full set like this would of been fun, but I wanted to give them some more standard fashion show images 😉