Natural Light and Fashion with a twist of Portrait

Being a Portrait and Natural light photographer and having the chance to use my skills and applying it to Fashion was an interesting challenge. .........Bring it !!"I very rarely walk away from a challenge and this one was no different.
 The first thing that I got all excited about was the opportunity to do an outside fashion shoot and using sunlight. I have found that nothing beats sunlight. It brings a richness to skin tones that you never can find a in artificial lighting environments.
Choosing your timing of the shoot is very important and with the making up of the models I knew that the only time we would have is the Golden hour. The golden hour is the time of the day when the sun is low on the horizon and I'm not a morning person so that left late afternoon. - I suppose I am a morning person just from the wrong way I love going to bed at 6 in the morning after spending a whole evening /early morning painting or creating art. -  The only challenge with that is that you only have so much time to do your shoot in. Thank goodness for living in Africa we have lots of sunshine and our golden hour lighting is very bright till the end. In the southern hemisphere we are having winter and  winter sun light in the golden hour  brings a nice blue hue on top of the rich yellow. So your models get defined much more and you don't have to worry so much about silhouette or over shadowing to much.
I decided when taking this challenge I was going to do this with the least amount of equipment. I have found that of late people are running them selves in circles about equipment and the paraphernalia that is available to photographers on the market today. I did this whole shoot with one camera, one flash and 2 lenses, and with that said I let the sun guide me for the rest. I ended up only using the flash at the very end of the hour and half shoot.
I really urge starting photographers to not worry about your equipment and rather spend your time shooting in daylight and practicing to frame your shots. Being a family and children portrait photographer I had chosen the hardest models to work with. Trying crawling behind a toddler for two hours and getting the shots, is one of the most daunting tasks, your learn very fast how to anticipate light, movement and reading your environment for the best shots.
Bringing this fast shoot approach to the fashion shoot helped a lot not just for the shooting but having that extra second on each shot.. I was able to enjoy my shots and anticipate the flow of the models. In that hour and a half we did seven scenes and still had a brake for pizza and something to drink.
At this point I have to add that having a team and a scenes coordinator helped SO MUCH !!!! Our team consisted of seven people , two extraordinary models, one brilliant make up artist, one amazing designer , one hairstylist with extraordinary coordination skill, an extra make up assistant with a flare for the arts and myself.
This cooking pot of talent produced one of the most amazing shoots I have had to work on. No one didn't know what to do. Between 7 of us we didn't forget anything. To quote one of my favorite cartoons when I opened the photos after the shoot for editing " I nearly went blind from over exposure of pure AWESOMENESS". I really did. Looking back from how this idea took shape until the finale product I cant believe it was only seven days.

Sneak preview of the FASHION SHOOT

Well Okay I'm trying to keep up with my blog, but yes got sidetracked this long weekend. Had the most amazing shoot yesterday . The most powerful thing that struck me yesterday while on shoot was and still is how stunning it is to work with people that do not have airs around them, what you see is what you get. And the team I had the chance to work with yesterday was not just amazing, but was an in site to the beauty of each person on the team. That each individual on the team has a true passion for what they do.  They had the chance to create freely within his/her field and the photographic products that I have been editing is proof of free creativity and to the level of excellence that each one on the team strives for not just in their careers but in their daily lives. To give you guys a little sneak preview

I am so in love with this photo
Model : Akiyo Kindiano
Make up : Evandra Botha
Hair stylist: Kelvin Krown
Photographer: Isabel Laurent - IamPhoto

Right I'm out of here stepping away from my computer think my eyes are crossed over from all the editing.