Messing with casual model shoots – let’s break some rules

Hong Kong has a community of photographers who like to organize sessions of casual model shoots. Yes, a “group shoot”! At first, it’s a weird idea for me because I can’t imagine how can a shoot proceed with multiple photographer with one model. And what about lighting? even though each has their own strobe but everyone will crowd around, competing for angles and model’s attention. Not to mention who to direct the model and the jamed radio frequency of wireless strobe, and few other’s strobe stand is blocking your way!

As a studio shoot beginner and adventurous photographer, I still want to experience that and humbly learn from this community.

One hour, 6 photographers, it was fun experiencing my first “group shoot”.

As anticipated, it’s more of a casual shoot if you know the price and yes every issue i expected above turn out to be true. But that’s the nature of it, let me try to get the most out of it.

I wasn’t really well equipped. It was with my Fujifilm X-T1 with vertical grip and no strobes, cus I’m told there are strobes to borrow with remote. Maybe due to I’m late, there is no more flash to put, I’m forced to shoot with one continuous ring light available. But as expected, the small ring light isn’t strong enough to override the fluorescent light of the room : and that is the biggest problem: the shutter speed flickering with the fluorescent light! To avoid the flicker pattern, I’m now forced to use 1/60 for all my shots! Oh my gosh!

With my XF 56mm/ f1.2, i can still push the ISO to 200. But my shutter is always 1/60. So i already anticipated all my shots will have camera shakes… that is bad…

Then bang bang bang all shot in 1/60, times up and good-bye everyone.

When I load up the images at home. Expectedly, the shots won’t be comparable to a serious studio shoot in every aspect. (of course largely due to my inexpereienc ein “group shoot” and my under-equipment) I’m doubtful did I make any usable shots at all?

Not really exciting raw shots there i can see on my computer… Besides technically bad shots due to shutter speed issue, most shots are unexciting (remember I was shooting with 6 people and no one is directing the model)

Frustrated, I begin to pull out some of my old tricks and break some rules of portraiture:

to be continued writing…