Tag Archives: fashion week

A day with New York City fashion designer, Nary Manivong

January 3, 2010 – 3:50 pm

First off, Happy New Years everyone!  Be sure to add me on Facebook, but if you do let me know you came from the blog. :]

Nary Manivong is an up and coming fashion designer and has been listed on the official NYC “Fashion Week” list for the past few season.  I met him at his show last February and being half Asian myself, I thought it would be a good personal project for myself to do a “Day in the life of a fashion designer” shoot with Nary Manivong while he presented his Spring 2010 collection.  He was very open to the idea and I decided to start my coverage of him at breakfast at his apartment in Brooklyn till the end of his showing  in the Meat Packing District of lower Manhattan.

The day starts in East Williamsburg Brooklyn, to his clothing factory in the Garment District of Manhattan (All of Nary’s clothes are made right in New York!), back to Brooklyn to pick up his brothers car to deliver his clothes to the shows location in lower Manhattan.

All photos were shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and either a Canon 24-70L or Canon 85mm 1.8 Lens.

To see the rest of the photos, please visit  my slide show and Nary’s clothes are available at NaryManivong.com

By Brian Dowling | Posted in Runway Fashion | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Christian Siriano Spring 2010 at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in NYC

November 3, 2009 – 12:50 am

First off, congrats to the Phillies for pushing a Game 6 of the World Series!

Below are the photographs from the Christian Siriano show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week at the Bryant Park Tents in New York City.  It seems just like yesterday that he was on Project Runway and then last season, Fall 2009 collection, he was showing at The Salon.  The Salon is the smallest of three tents at Bryant Park.  Fast forward six months latest and business and investors must be good because Christian was showing at The Promonade which is a venue two and a half to three times bigger(I’m guessing here) than The Salon.

I was front and center for this show and Christian chose to have a single model line on a very very wide gray-blue runway.  I would estimated they removed four rows of seats for the extra wide runway.  It looked like the ocean as you can see from his blues and wave inspired collection.  It reminded me of Leanne Marshall’s “wave inspired” collection from Season Five of Project Runway.  Anyways, Enjoy the photos.  For those that want to be a runway fashion photographer, all images were shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, 300L 2.8 IS at ISO 400,  1/320,  f 4 and Kelvin was adjusted manually to maybe 3200?   The lighting was PERFECT.  All I did to these photos was +6 contrast + 6 Saturation and 20% unsharp mask in Photoshop. I would say about 75% of the shows I am shooting at ISO 800-1000, but ISO 400 makes me happy =]]

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By Brian Dowling | Posted in Runway Fashion | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Diesel Black Gold FW09

March 20, 2009 – 2:20 pm

The media pit at the end of the runway in “The Tent” was easily 250 people deep and you are shooting elbow to elbow.  If you are one of the lucky ones, you have someone short in front of you.  Even at 6′1 I find myself standing ontop of my Pelican 1510 Case to get more height and even further back on the risers in the last row, guys are standing on their cases vertically like a row of dominoes.   I’ve heard stories of a guy falling off and knocking down ten other photographers, but luckily I’ve never seen anyone start a row of tumbling.  Its been close though…real close.

As for the show, I was in love. Dark tones with tons of back lighting which really made the huge waifish of hair pop out against the black.  You could hear the moans from the other photographers as its difficult to shoot, but I like shooting something different.  Clothes walking down a white background are easy to shoot, but its just boring.  So, kudos to Diesel and to the challenge.  There was also a six or seven person jazz band at the front of the runway.  I’m not putting up any photos of the band, but a quick search on YouTube should point you in the right direction.

Most photographers are shooting at 1/320th with a 70-200mm, but with the longer glass of the 300mm 2.8 IS -  I like to shoot at 1/500th and at iso 800.  I will sacrifice a tiny bit of noise for much greater sharpness. Plus, even when blown up on a large magazine page such as V Magazine’s, you can’t tell the difference from iso 640 to iso800. . I shoot in manual mode.  So, I’m adjusting in camera from f/2.8 to f/4.   The turn around point is usually the brightest.  So, you have to compensate quickly or you will overexpose the models face.   

By Brian Dowling | Posted in Runway Fashion | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)