Having covered the Clothing Show several times now, I was eager to get some shots other than the usual runway.  Although the designers love runway images (yes I did give them plenty of those), they also requested backstage, atmosphere, candid shots etc with which to fill their blogs.  The show this season was in the Queen Elizabeth Building and there was a great space designated for make up and hair. Heather (Runway Director) and I decided that this location provided a great opportunity for some backstage candids and for the first time I was the only one shooting anywhere behind the scenes (I did have a great photographer assiting backstage shots on Saturday – Ryan McNab).  We also decided that there would be no photo booth this year due to logistics and this encouraged me to get a bit creative on the Runway.  Since the 4 shows are repeated twice on Saturday, the second set of shows I positioned myself in different parts of the runway and created photographs with interesting angles and compositions. 

Thanks to everyone involved with the Clothing Show and we’ll see you next season!!

All of my backstage and misc runway shots can be viewed here.

Another season and I was again the Official Photographer – Sponsor for The Clothing Show.  It was a fun weekend filled with some great local designers and vintage clothing.  This year the venue moved to the Queen Elizabeth Building and although the runway set up was similar to last season, the lighting was not.  There were some great stage lights but unfortunately the runway was to the right of them as opposed to underneath them (not that that may have been any better) creating shadows on one side and harsh lighting on the other side of the models.  This was due to some drains where the runway would have been and we know that would have been a bit of a disaster with those heels. The stage lights were a also bit direct and did not light the runway evenly leaving me with several inconsistent shots.  There were a couple of sweet spots but within the sweet spots I had to battle the usual possibilities of shots being ruined from flashes, models eyes closed or looking down, not getting the right step in the walk etc. There was also some inconsistent lighting at the end of the runway.  On the photographers’ left of centre was a very contrasty direct light and there was no direct light right of centre thus making it 4 stops darker.  Don’t get me wrong, I got many great shots but what else would we photographers talk about.  Regardless, the shows went well. There were 4 shows total on Friday encompassing 24 designers and 8 shows on Saturday (same 4 shows repeated twice).  Also, the Clothing Show for the first time added 4 shows on Sunday.  Yes that’s a long weekend for everyone involved. Visit www.theclothingshow.com for the complete listing of designers.

It was a great weekend for me and not only did I enjoy meeting past designers, models, photographers and MUA’s, but meeting new contacts as well.

Thanks to Heather (Runway Director)  and her team for a great job in containing the chaos that you never saw.

Thanks also to Clayton and Bonnie from the Clothing Show.

Friday’s runway images can be viewed here.

Saturday’s runway images can be viewed here.

Colette and I had a couple of days off and decided to go to Montreal.  We could not have picked a better day weather wise and we spent our day walking around Old Montreal casually snapping up anything interesting.  I enjoyed the weather and the surroundings so much I hardly took any photos but I did like the one I shot above.  I saw a really cool walkway and decided to get a ground perspective of the cobblestone alleyway and Colette’s boots. To add to the scene is a homeless man standing at the end of the alleyway interested in why I was lying on the ground.