margaret zhang

What a week of fashion and style spotting at MBFWA this year. A lot of denim flares, simple whites, monochromes, wearing their coats as capes, chanel bags but few dared to stand out and play with fashion. I was expecting more layers and colour combinations, but I think we were super safe with our styling. Nevertheless that’s who we are and there is nothing wrong with that. Let’s just say, “wear whatever makes you feel good about yourself”. That is one great advice from Leaf Greener,  former senior Fashion Editor of Elle China and now freelance Stylist.

I’ve also changed up my shooting style at MBFWA. I normally shoot with an 85mm Nikon Lens, but I knew it was going to a lot more chaotic and less opportunities to pull people out to shoot front-on so I ended up shooting candidly and using my 70-200mm Nikon lens. I thought my arm would die from carrying this long lens but thankfully enough my arm and wrist was good throughout (all thanks to my kick boxing training). One tip: please do some wrist and arm stretches and rub some “muscle ease” oil from Elemis. It really works a treat and you can go on shooting for hours. Another big reason why I ended choosing this zoom lens is because I can quickly and dynamically zoom in and out for detail shots and full body shots. It was certainly a good choice for fashion runways too, no flash required but shoot with high ISO (around 1200 to 1600, depending on how much room light) and at 4.0 to 4.5 aperture. The more detail the better, and have it on AL SERVO settings for focusing. I’m a manual shooter, but sometimes having your settings on auto is handy because there is less to worry about it (jumping from harsh sun light to under sheltered areas). I also shot most of my images in landscape (which I never used to do). I figured that it would be easier to crop the images into a square format when I post them on Instagram to show the entire outfit. Win!

Lastly but not the least, fashion week may sound incredibly fancy and glamourous to you, but honestly there is a lot of hard work that goes into it. It takes a lot of appreciation to really understand what goes on behind the scenes as a photographer/videographer/journalist at fashion week. There is so much planning, and strategy to produce the best coverage and to stand out from all the competition. There’s also starvation and 4:30am sleep time (no sleep ins) which all seemed to be the norm during fashion week. Regardless it’s all worth it. It’s all part of the experience and I can sincerely say that I loved every part of it. It was the people I met and was surrounded with, that made my day more fun and interesting.

So thank you. Thank you so much for giving me the privilege of stopping and shooting your street style look because if it wasn’t for you, I would have absolutely no content to produce, and I’ll be sleeping early every night, now that won’t be fun hey?

All images are copyrighted to Karen Woo, please email hello@karenwoo.com.au for permission and credit where appropriate on all social media platforms. Thanks so much for your support x