One light setup: sb 28dx modified with a photek softliter and triggered with Cybersyncs. Ideally I wanted a two light setup.. and I do have about 3 – 4 lights in total however no means to Trigger em as yet (some csrb’s are required).

I Positioned the lights mostly camera left and high so i could both use it as a hair light / keylight. Worked pretty well. the rest was like clock work. For the image i threw up I moved the light to camera right as it gave me more detail on the little black dress from that side. A few adjustments had to be made in terms of shutter speed and iso as the sun was in and out behind clouds affecting the exposure here and there. we were done in about 2 or 3 hours. It was fun The photos came out great. They were published on monday 23, 2010 in the Flair center spread.

With that out the way, lets get into the meat of the matter. The assignment was an all day event started at about 10:00 am and ended at approximately 6:00 pm. I will state the obvious I was shooting models, show casing swimwear by various designers at the moment the only one I can remember is Minka (love her work).

Equipment
I have not yet recieved my Softligher and Cybersync Triggers so I’m still on shoot through smith victor umbrella’s and poverty wizards.

Nikon D2h
sb-28-dx

and Keisha who had to deal with the heavy lightstand (to give me the positiong I required for my Lights, Without her non of those photos would be possible)

The Shoot

There were 4 Beautiful models and A whole lotta swimwear. keeping focused on this shoot was not an issue ( I jest it never is). The ladies knew what to do and needed little Artistic Direction So the shoot flowed very well so to speak.

I’ve posted my favored photo as a preview of what the output is like. Here I had the light overhead from left pushing light down on the subject. was at about 1/2 power distance doesn’t really count it was as close as it could be without being in the frame I love this shot the most because it reminds me of scorpion / subzero or reptile (i’m sure you recognize that pose if your gamer / geek of any kind)

Model: Debbie-Ann Willams
Makeup: Latoya Grindley
Photography: Gladstone Taylor

Here’s a link to all the photos published on the Jamaica-Gleaner.com

Difficulties faced on this assignment

• photoshoot took place when the sun was its meanest 12pm – 2pm so i was in constant search of shade and trying as best as possible to keep the sky out of my compositions. I pretty much had to max the shutter for all images, and work the aperature and light accordingly to expose at the luminance levels I wanted / needed

That was pretty much it in terms of problems faced. everything else i could have worked around.

Equipment Used:

• nikon d2h
• sb 28dx
• cactus poverty wizards
• smith victor lightstand and shoot through umbrella

as you can see i got a bitter sweet equipment list for the assignment. however could you tell that i was using a 10 year old dslr?? could you also tell that i did no retouching to the subject at all?? I’m just curious . Is there anything you think i could have applied in camera to get a better result lemme know what you thinking hit me up in the comments with your answers

p.s Yes my name is spelt wrong Gladestone.. dunno where that came from but hopefully it wont happen again.

In terms of equipment I had a gripped 30D with a 85mm f1.8 on a giottos monopod. the 1.8 aperture came in handy the 85mm was enough reach the main problem was horrid lighting from Intec (a local lighting company here in Jamaica).

There were shadows cast on the run way, so at points you could see the model’s walking from harsh light directly into shadows, So it became a matter of shooting at the right points.

From reviewing the images, Friday’s image sucked in terms of my standards. They’re usable but the photographers eye syndrome kicks in and  I know i’m capable of better output. The light flare’s were unacceptable though. Luckily saturday and sunday’s light were addressed and though not perfect I was able to milk it for what its worthy and got some great images for saturday and sunday’s presentations. To the left there’s an image from Milkaya Laijah presentation, Worn by Pulse Investment Supermodel Nell Robinson and Here’s a link to some images from the cfw 2010 collection Enjoy .

Recognized a few of the shooters there this year, I was shooting alongside Giovanni Powell and our lovely assistant was non other than my beautiful girlfriend @vampnixen. She took excellent notes of the event for us to match back with the photos interms of captions and tags.

The lighting at the event wasn’t the greatest thing ever. Tungsten mixed with a whole lot of madness. Fashion Block is a public fashion event with a vip area, the aim seems to be getting the crowd amped and hyper so there’s a lot of flashing lights and smoke (yes smoke) while the fashion show is taking place. This sadly means consistency is almost completely out the window. The show started @ aproximately 8:45pm and would run to 12:00am.

Gear I was packing was my 30D, 70 – 200 f4 L (yes f4 @ night) and a sb 28dx hot shoe strobe for fill if needed, memory cards, spare batteries, notepad, pen all in my crumpler 6 million dollar home bag.

Shooting with that kinda light @ f4 made things kinda tricky, The models walk rly fast sometimes so 160th was almost too slow to create a very sharp exposure. However going above that was creating underexposed images as a result of the f4 aperature on the glass. Definitely Could not punch the iso as it would induce noise which I wasn’t prepared to deal with. Exposures boiled down to being 1/160th @ f4 on iso 200 Shot in raw for the most part for color correction with those crazy lighting stunts they were pulling.

Result : The image to the left is from the skin graphed collection. This collection was among my favourite of what the entire fashion show had to offer to be honest. To view the rest of my coverage visit my portfolio