Posts Tagged ‘wedding’

Trash The Dress

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

I was out shooting with my good friend Rob and a few others this past weekend in Grays.  Ordinarily our shoots involve buildings, scenery or light painting but today was a bit different.  One of our fellow POTN members had set up a day of shooting with a few lovely models (are there any other kind?) for a Trash the Dress practice shoot.

One of the first few shots of Natasha.  Just getting things rolling.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept and don’t like following links in blogs, it generally involves a wedding dress or equally elegant gown and a setting you wouldn’t normally wear such an outfit in.  In today’s case, we had the sunny Amy and Natasha modeling a couple of eBay wedding dresses out on some estates and a beach in Essex.

Swinging on the rope gym.

The day started off slow as we (the photographers) were all more or less new to this type of shoot and we were tripping ourselves up trying to get different light synching methods to all work together.  In the end, we stuck to my trusty pocket wizard Plus II’s and just shot everything in manual.  After that, it was just a question of trying to figure out where and how to pose the models, which for me is the trickiest part of a shoot like this.  Fortunately, both of the girls had done this before and didn’t need a whole lot of direction.

Amy in the playground.
Setup shot by Rob Bridgens

The main event of the day was to end up down at the beach to shoot a bit of a paint fight in front of the wreck of an old lightship called The Gull.  Rob and I snuck in a few more final shots in the dwindling light while everyone else waited patiently.

Amy in front of the shipwreck at Grays.

The paint fight itself was a bit chaotic; 6 photographers and a videographer all vying for a better vantage point while simultaneously avoiding paint splatter is not conducive to an organized shoot.  It was fun (for the girls especially), but there were lessons to be learned for the next attempt.

A final shot before it got too dark.

In the end, I think everyone walked away with some decent shots and picked up a few new skills or ideas which was what the entire process was about.

Thanks again to Steve for organizing it all.  Also thanks to Razvan for taking the videos of us shooting all day (and for holding light stands as well!).  The first video of our daytime shooting is available here and the second video which covers the paint fight is here.

There are a few more photos in the gallery.  It was hard to pick my favourites to post in the blog this time, so check out the rest!