Melbourne Spring Fashion Week (MSFW) 2010 - Summary

This year's Melbourne Spring Fashion Week (MSFW 2010) was packed with challenges, new experiences, and favors.

Challenges and New Experiences

Already named the challenge of lighting in the previous post here. Here is another one:

I had an interesting challenge to prepare the slide-show / backdrop behind one of the fashion shows. They were slides for designer labels, labels of accessories and shoes and slides of performers, etc. It was a big challenge because I didn't even know the program before that - Keynote and my mac experience can only qualify at best as beginner level.

Here is one of the simplest slides, with only the design label, no labels for shoes and accessories.


This is the macbook I used to prepare the presentation. Note the run sheet next to it on the left with yellow highlights.


I was so worried about not being able to find the logos (jpegs), mis-spelling the label where I couldn't find the pic. Getting the slides in the wrong order and whether I was putting the right content in the slides.. not all were design labels, it was the backdrop for the whole show.

Anyway, with many prayers, I made it just in time. Five pages of run sheet converted to no less that 60 slides. I checked them and checked them again and again. After, no less that 4 complete check from the beginning to the end, my first Keynote slide-pack was complete! So relieved! :)



During the MSFW 2010 week, I had my laptop with me which meant I could work through the pics as the week went on. Despite being worried about losing the laptop or damaging it, it helped me to get several sets of photos ready just as the client wants them.

Sweet! :)

Favors


Nikon was a key sponsor of MSFW 2010 this year. It was fantastic! I got to know some of the cool people from Nikon professional services. In particular, Julie M. who let me work on my pics during the day in their service centre / media room.

They also lent me a Nikon D3s for the week as well as a copy of the new 70-200mm f/2.8 VR2 lens. I also had the D3x for a while, tried out the 200-400mm as well as... yep... wait... drum roll... the 600mm f/4 VR which is a really big beast! So heavy (over 5kg), so long, I played with it for a little while backstage in the make-up area where I couldn't actually focus on anything (with the minimum focus length of 5m) but boy did I feel powerful with it.. Talk about men with their toys.. :)

I didn't keep the 600mm or even the 200-400mm, just the D3s and the new 70-200mm, yeah, just the D3s and the 700-200mm... ;) Had to reconfigure the camera from scratch which wasn't a trivial task because the camera is really customisable, but I was more than happy to pay that price!

BTW, love the shorter minimum focusing distance of the new 70-200mm and lack of light fall-off at the corners!



Another big favor is from a top notch make-up artist of Napoleon Perdis, Shev Kelly. She kindly gave me two front row reserved seats at one of the shows. Thank you so very much Shev, I owe you one!

The tickets went to a photographer friend of mine, Brett and his brand new girl-friend and did well to impress. ;)