Anna Turner's Award Winning Project Displayed on Gallery
This past weekend Elena and I went to visit the University of Wisconsin-Madison to see the fashion show, La Moda Processa, that her sister was featured in. Anna’s kind of a big deal in our humble opinions – well not just ours but a few others as well – so it was a blast being able to see her pieces on a runway first hand. She has a truly unique but practical style. I say practical in the sense that what she has on the runway looks like runway clothes but the second it comes off you can see someone dying to wear it day to day. The girl has a brilliant business mindset which she displayed in her “Library” project above. It was pretty humbling to see so much of the awesomeness on display. Anna interned with Lara Miller last summer and is interning in a design position with Kohl’s this summer. Next year she will be finishing her degree at F.I.T. in New York and after that I am positive that we will be hearing a good deal about her progress in the industry. 
The show started off with some models and then broke out into some male clothing design which was pretty interesting. Turns out one of the designers (not shown below) actually modeled some of his own clothes as well. Having just watched Zoolander the night before, the male model concept was hard to brush off until you see one of the designers on stage. 
The piece below is one that Anna had designed and wore as well. The model nailed the showing, wearing it with the confidence that one would as they paraded it with pride on the streets of their local city.
Not a great shot but I kept it in because it’s the closest view of one of Anna’s project.
I’m sure you see it too but the center girl’s “look” froze me solid when I took the photo. The dress and shawl(?) fitted perfectly for the mood she was displaying. Almost felt like she was acting in a play rather than displaying garments in a show. Though I do suppose if you do it right then that is the feeling to be portrayed upon the audience.
Another of Anna’s pieces in the center. It was a hand painted pattern she deemed Butterfl-eyes. It was pretty astonishing.
There even was a bridal line that someone designed. This was rather surprising to me as that seems like a pretty huge undertaking but it was a pretty interesting line up.
Anna’s final piece in the show was this velvety dress that shined beautifully on stage. Wonderful textures and I loved the way the light hit off of it. Since I know little of fashion or fashion design most of my thoughts related to the photography of such pieces and how the light interacts with the pieces. This one was fantastic for that, really showed the model’s curves and form in something that a texture/fabric that I feel rarely accomplishes that in such a flattering light. Truly something special and something I would love to take into a studio and photograph.
The ladies from “College Fashionista” actually help sponsored the event and gave out prizes for the most fashionable student at the show. Pretty interesting blog, and apparently a huge hit amongst fashion bloggers. It is refreshing to see something like this; the recognizition of fashion and style outside the standard fashion community. I applaud these girls’ efforts to go and photograph their subjects, who are unaware that they are about to be featured on their blog when they start their day (that is, until they are interviewed and let known how awesomely stylish they are). Side Note: Anna was just recently featured on said blog just prior to the fashion show – she really has her stuff together.
Lighting And Set:
There were two types of lighting for the show. The gallery lighting and the runway lighting. The runway lighting was a bit dimmer than I thought it would be so I had to crank the ISO and stay “low-ish” (1/100-200th second) on the shutter speed. It seemed to change a bit as the show progressed, getting lighter at a few instances unexpectedly, though that could have just been the light fixtures. The gallery lighting provided a stark and interesting light source for the artwork themselves. However, this top down hatchet lighting provided quite awful lighting for people when used without flash. One of the few times I wish I had a flash on me – with a diffuser of course. I am looking into getting one that was mentioned on the strobist a few weeks ago and I saw in action at the WAMI awards. It is not ideal but certainly good for group/people shots on the spot.
Photo Notes:
This was my first fashion show that I have attended and while my main “telephoto” portrait lens is a bit low on the zoom side (at 85mm) I was still sitting in a good enough spot to get some fun photographs of the clothes and the models. I think it would be a ton of fun to actually bring the 70-200mm out with an off camera strobe and get some dynamic shots of the pieces. Hopefully I will do that sometime in the near future.
Gear Used:
Canon 5D MKII
Canon 24mm TS-E f/3.5 L lens – for some fun gallery shots
Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens – mainly used during the runway shoots
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Twitter: @CFashionista
Anna Turner featured on College Fashionista