[clackers]

Good morning all, I hear that on Monday we start Diarrhoea Awareness Week.

Runs until Friday.

I've just gotten off the phone with the principal at my son's school. He had said my son had been acting up in class.

My response was, "He acts up at home all the time, but I don't call you, do I?"

This week I want to talk about fashion shooting that's 'catalogue' by nature, not 'editorial'.

The workflow difference is huge, because you have to get through a large number of items quickly before everyone involved loses interest - including yourself. Here, I was doing a cashmere line for a friend of a friend. The target audience was middle aged women, not the Tik Tok generation, so that shapes the direction of the shoot.

It's all about the garments, so the setup has to display them accurately. Light properly, and use a colour calibration chart for postprocessing, because you don't want to be the cause of an online customer dispute about the colour shown on the website they ordered from being slightly different from the article they receive.

If using flashes it typically only needs to appear a couple of times in your test shots, because flashes are consistent unlike sunlight, and you really only need to calibrate again if the power levels vary dramatically. I'd start the flashes at the front at 1/8 power on manual levels and then iterate.

Since this is not editorial photography, the model must not be allowed to detract from the garment. The safest pose is looking away, because as viewers, it's the eyes we tend to pay attention to in a picture. The twisted angle and weight on the back leg here slims the body, the formal pose is called 'contrapposto'.

This is the K-1 with the Sigma 35mm Art at f10, with four cheap manual Yongnuo flashes - two in softboxes front left and right (you can see the one on the left is dialled *down* to give a 3D effect, and two more at the back on high power blasting the white background), and the Yongnuo remote trigger, which has an LCD display where you can dial in each flash's power without having to actually go over to them.

To finish with, there's the story of the mother anxiously awaiting her daughter's plane to land.

The daughter had just come back from abroad, trying to find adventure during her gap year.

As the daughter was exiting the plane, Mum noticed a man directly behind her daughter dressed in feathers with exotic tattooed markings all over his body and carrying a shrunken head.

The daughter introduced this man as her new husband.

Mom gasped out loud in disbelief and screamed, 'I said for you to marry a rich doctor .... a *rich* doctor!'

Find the rest of the series here: Clackers' Beginners Tips (Collected) - PentaxForums.com

[Zooland]

Thanks for that valuable tip.

[shyrsio]

Hey there! Thanks for the tips and for the jokes!

[pschlute]

Good article explaining the importance of pose, lighting, and especially colour accuracy. Although I employ a colour managed workflow myself, absolute accuracy is not essential for my amateur work. I can see that for product work it is essential, especially for printed (catalogue) medium.

[clackers]

Hey there! Thanks for the tips and for the jokes!

Thanks, shyrsio, that's what it's all about!

[clackers]

Good article explaining the importance of pose, lighting, and especially colour accuracy. Although I employ a colour managed workflow myself, absolute accuracy is not essential for my amateur work. I can see that for product work it is essential, especially for printed (catalogue) medium.

Exactly right, Peter.

And of course, your monitor has to be calibrated, too. I use a Spyder Express.

Without it, my images come out very slightly biased to the blue side when posting on the web.