Fashion Weekend Street Photography

1/125, f/5.6, ISO 250, 92mm

We’re taking another deep delve into the archives for this post, for a bunch of images I’d forgotten I’d even taken. But since we’re back into fashion week season it seems to be the ideal time to have found them and dusted them off.

After my first visit to London Fashion Weekend very almost this time last February, I hung around after the show with another photographer I met there taking some photographs of the people at the event.

I don’t often do street photography. Here I had a few massive confidence boosters; firstly, I was with someone else also taking pictures. It was also a pretty high profile event where photography was expected. But I also had a lanyard with the logo of the event and the word ‘photographer’ written on it. It’s amazing how such a seemingly minor thing can give you such a boost, but that bit of card essentially says ‘yes, I am allowed to take pictures here, don’t ask’. We were even asked if we were paparazzi at one point. As far as confidence boosters go it’s hard to beat that.

So I started taking pictures of some complete strangers.

1/100, f/4, ISO 200, 75mm

Despite this newfound confidence I was still keen to keep my distance, so just about every shot in this post – with the exception of the image at the top – was taken with my 70-300mm telephoto lens. It wasn’t all people, either – There was a vacated table outside a coffee shop that attracted both my eye and some pigeons.

1/80, f/5, ISO 200, 180mm

1/100, f/5.6, ISO 200, 300mm

It’s worth noting at this point that these images weren’t edited when I found them, so they’ve been through my latest post-processing techniques. The first of the pigeon images has had a default cross process done in Color Efex Pro, the second a simple monochroming by Aperture itself.

Back at London Fashion Weekend, my company and I weren’t the only ones taking photographs. But I think we felt more confident in doing it.

1/50, f/4, ISO 200, 70mm

This next shot is one of my favourites of the batch, but alas I know not who these feet belong to. Nor where to get these shoes, before you ask. If you were going to.

1/80, f/5, ISO 200, 150mm

As we were still inside the ticketed area of the event, there was nothing but fashionable people about the place, making it easier to find interesting people to photograph.

1/125, f/4.5, ISO 320, 105mm

At this point, being a mid-February day, the light was fading fast, but not quite fast enough to notice. If you look back through the images in the post – all in chronological order – you can see the shutter speeds getting gradually longer before I realised and upped the ISO. I’m not always very good at paying attention to things like that.

That table still wasn’t cleared. Another pigeon came along and found it.

1/160, f/5, ISO 320, 225mm

Anyway, back to the unguarded moments.

1/160, f/4, ISO 320, 70mm

1/160, f/4.5, ISO 400, 95mm

We obviously weren’t the only ones taking pictures. Lots of people were posing for photographs with their friends, giving us a chance to grab some posed shots too.

1/50, f/4, ISO 320, 70mm

And of course, for me to indulge my fascination with photographing photographers.

1/250, f/5, ISO 400, 150mm

I also had a chance to try a new variation of the theme – a photographer photographing, with what they’re photographing in the shot as well.

1/125, f/4.5, ISO 400, 100mm

It was towards the end of our little shoot that we were finally approached by someone asking us to take photographs. As a photographer this is always an awful position to be put in, people expect that because you’re using a decent camera you’ll be able to pick up their camera, which is usually set up in a really improper way, and take a great photo with it. I graciously let my accomplice take the photo, and took a photo of him doing so.

1/30, f/4, ISO 400, 70mm

These were the people who asked if we were paparazzi. We had to tell them that no, they hadn’t just got a paparazzo to take their photo. I’m not sure they go for that sort of thing, the paparazzi.

It was at about this point that it started snowing – what a difference a year makes – so we decided to go our separate ways and head home.

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