On a beautiful, sunny Spring weekend I had the opportunity to organize a fashion photoshoot in Lucerne, Switzerland. I could collaborate with Zebra Fashion, a well known fashion brand from Switzerland. They let me choose a Spring 2019 outfit from their new collection and sent it to me. I asked Melissa, a good friend of mine, to be the model for this shoot. She also has the needed expertise in fashion and make up, which made her the perfect fit.
It was my first fashion photoshoot since I mainly work as landscape and travel photographer. Obviously, I was a little nervous. But, I can tell you already now, I loved doing it!
Since I was completely free in chosing the location, I decided to shoot in Lucerne, a city nearby which offers some stunning views and great photo locations.
One week before the shoot, I went there to find some fitting locations. I made sure to go at around the same time the shoot would take part, to make sure the lighting was good at the chosen locations.
One day before the shooting the desaster: My Nikon d7200, my main camera, fell on a rock floor and broke into pieces. I hated myself for it, but it got repaired by Nikon quite quickly. However, for the shooting I had to go back to my „good old“ Sony Alpha 68.
Before the shooting, I made sure that I set all the settings right. The most important ones in portrait or fashion photography are the aperture, the focus points and obviously, the proper settings for the present light. After some test shots, I was confident I could do it with this camera too. Now, looking back at it, I was very pleased with its performance: The Sony saved my weekend!
As background we’ve chosen several places. We started off with a yellow wall, which fit the outfit. Then, we headed towards the lake that gave a beautiful background in the evening sun. I’ve tried to play with shadows to give the photos an interesting structure and with different standing points.
What I learned, to me and probably the most photographers, the lighting is the most important part in a shooting. Since we photographed during the late evening, we could use that warm, soft light coming from the setting sun, which gave amazing effects.
Finally, after the sun set behind the mountains, we finished tired but happy. We had the feeling that we could produce some amazing shots.
A special thank you to the amazing model, Melissa!
On Sunday, I edited the photos since we wanted to upload them on Monday. For the editing work I mainly use Adobe Lightroom. I made sure, the focus was on the model, brightened the important parts and darkened in some photos the edges to really lead the eye towards the model.
If you wish a proper tutorial on how I edit my photos, let me know!
I was more than happy with the results. Obviously, there’s always room for improvement, but for my first fashion photoshoot I am pleased with my work, and obviously extremely grateful for the awesome work done by the model!
But enough talking, here are the photos of that shoot:
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