Fashion of Goodwill

I'm just realizing - not a lot of blogging for the last few weeks (apologies to my faithful fan base - wink, wink.). That's all fine and good, because I've been substantially busy with some actual picture taking, so, while blogging is fun, I would much rather be taking photos. The best part of all this picture taking? Some of it is actually paying! - still waiting for the check to be true - but, in theory, a real paying gig. Maybe even more exciting, the images may actually be published. For now we'll just say I'm theoretically published with a promise to keep you all (wink, wink) posted.

On Thursday night I attended a really fabulous event, the Fashion of Goodwill fundraiser held at the French embassy (Thank you Brendan and Em for the press pass!). You can read more about the event in this Washington Post article, and read what other people are writing here and here.

For such a fabulous occasion, I thought it more than appropriate to rent a really fabulous lens, the Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR - hot dog! (rent yours here for just $30/day, but be sure to reserve ahead of time). As photographers there are often times when we forced to admit that the right high-end gear will not improve our picture taking ability. This is not one of those times. Even though I already own a perfectly good 70-210, sharp and lovely for studio sessions - slow and dumb in low light, I could not have taken these runway shots without this fast VR lens. Granted the 2.8 VR is about the size of my forearm, and by the end of the runway show, my back was tired and a bit cranky. However, the lens performed flawlessly. Even when I turned the lens into the lights for that rock-n-roll wedding dress effect the lens was only occasionally fooled. Basically, if I missed a shot with this baby it was, in all likely hood, my own darn fault. Here are a few of the ones pointed directly into the light - love the view. FYI, these pics were shot in RAW but are pretty much right out of the box as they say.




More photos from the evening including more straight on runway shots can be viewed at my flickr site here.