next | amyromer

I recently received Next’s Winter and Christmas catalogue in the post, which at first I thought was odd as it’s definitely not something I’d sign up to but soon realised that it would be the calalogue that featured Jane’s shoots I assisted over summer.

I quickly flipped through and instantly found Heloise Guerin outside St. Paul’s Cathedral and even found my own shadow as I shaded her from the heat of the scorching July morning.

It was the challenges we faced at St. Paul’s where I felt I’d really benefitted from the breadth of knowledge and experience from Jane and her team. Jane apologised for the 6am start but she knew that by 9am, we’d be swamped with tourists and it would be increasingly difficult to shoot. This way, we’d also gain from the morning sun, although we were still shooting up until 4pm because of the difficulties of location shoots – living out of a parked Winnebago whilst scouting for different places to shoot that will avoid the Japanese wedding photographers that seem to be scattered across St. Paul’s shooting rich Japanese engaged couples outside famous tourist attractions in wedding gear bought specifically for the shoot and not worn on their wedding day…(Jane’s curiosity couldn’t help but ask them what they were up to). This along with the normal hold-ups of garment changes, make-up retouching, etc etc certainly introduced me head first into the world of fashion.

These shoots take an incredible amount of organisation – car passes, parking spaces, drivers, location rights, models, make-up, hair, tethering, equipment, assisting, designing, directing, breakfast and lunch supplies…oh and photographing. Fashion is certainly a team effort and is incredibly involved.

I don’t think I was really aware of how much I took away from the experience until I had to shoot my first fashion shoot two days ago, which I had really not been looking forward to as a documentary photographer. https://amyromer.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/fashion-shoot/ I instinctively wanted to plan the shoot with Jeff (my model) beforehand, showing him pictures of ideas I had so we could collaborate based on both our experiences. I knew my model would be more experienced than I was as a photographer so their input was hugely important to me. I arranged to be on location at 7am so I had time to scout for a specific spot and arranged for my model to meet us at 8am, so he wasn’t hanging around unnecessarily. I had every piece of equipment I felt could potentially be needed and my model was in charge of the clothes he wanted to model – a weight gladly taken off my mind. We worked with two assistants and knew exactly where we were going for breakfast after the shoot! Job done and home to Falmouth by 10:30am. I know that without assisting Jane, there would have been several essential elements missing – the most important element being confidence in what I was doing.

A few shots from my first fashion shoot: