Covering the shows is part of my job at IFB, so my take-aways on a professional level are a bit different than the average blogger. Even so, I know I can’t be alone in these feelings of gratitude and excitement when it comes to attending fashion shows. Last season I posted  a personal account, like a diary of sorts, of my experience day-to-day at NYFW, including who I saw, where I went and how I felt about everything. This post’s traffic and feedback far exceeded any of the (dozen or so) posts I did that talked about the actual collections.

This revelation brought up a discussion at the office: What is the value of covering NYFW shows for personal style bloggers? We all wondered if blog readers come to their favorite blogs for show reviews, or for personal accounts of the adventures each individual had throughout the week.

I asked a few of IFB’s favorite bloggers that we got to hang out with during the week to explain a little about how and why they cover fashion week.

Alicia Lund: Her personal blog is Cheetah Is The New Black, but she also covered the shows for The Glitter Guide as well as RealBeauty.com. Her coverage on each of these three channels was specific to which site she was invited through.

“I think my readers enjoyed seeing a few fashion week snippets on my blog but I feel as though if they’re interested in seeing the full collections they’re better off checking the photos on Style.com because my photos will never compare. It’s fun to provide some behind the scene photos or to give readers an insight into fashion week through your eyes that they couldn’t get on Style.com / anywhere else. As far as newbie bloggers, simply attending fashion week won’t necessarily help their traffic. It could however help their chances of getting more show invites in the future. But a great part about fashion week is the people you meet so I would highly suggest they go for the networking… which will help their traffic!”

Ann Colville Somma: Covered for Holier Than Now and Cult of Pretty (both her own sites).

For Holier than Now, I gave in to the fact that I have never been able to shoot good front of house (runway) images, so I decided to use Instagram while I was at the shows to share fun stuff while it happened. [...] On Holier, I only posted about collections when I had a little personal story to tell or an image I really liked.  I noticed these did way better than in previous seasons when I tried to “cover” the shows. On Cult of Pretty I did the exact opposite – I decided to try to cover backstage as comprehensively and quickly as I could – given the resources I had.  This meant hiring a photographer to ensure I had strong original content and could essentially be in two places at once, and carefully working out a schedule and turnaround time … then editing into the wee hours so I could get the images up before they felt like old news.  I learned as a went along and watched what people were responding to and reblogging, and I also asked my readers afterwards if they liked it all and did they want less or more next season.  [...] It was also worth it because I met so many people backstage and made long-term connections that have a value beyond the posts.  That’s a big part of fashion week for me – the opportunity to meet inspiring people.

Kiley Steinberg: Covered for her personal blog, A Sequin Dress At Breakfast

I sometimes debate when covering a show whether or not to use the collections photos off of style.com for a show I attended…no doubt they are more detailed and higher quality than my own photos, but I’ve decided that I think my readers appreciate seeing photos from my perspective – that I took myself.  Anyone can go to style.com or the designers site and see polished and professional photos, but from my own cameras pics my readers see much more than just the collection – they get a feel for where I was sitting, what the attendees look like, the set up of the show, etc.  I think my readers appreciate seeing that more ‘real’ side to attending shows.  Most of of my readers aren’t fashion bloggers, and so I’ve been trying to think of the things I was curious about before I had these experiences in attending NYFW – things I take for granted now – such as how do you get to attend a show, how does seating work inside a show, who else attends them, what do people wear to shows, things like that.  Those are things my readers aren’t reading about anywhere else, and that aren’t really discussed in magazines or other mass media. 

So I put the question to you, IFB community: What do you want out of NYFW coverage from your favorite bloggers?

[Images via Shut up, I love That Shirt On You, A Sequin Dress at Breakfast, Cheetah Is The New Black and Cult of Pretty.]

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With a feed as robust as IFB’s (we’re following more than 3,000 handles) it can be a chore to sort through the best tweets and photos – but then again, that’s why we have hashtags! From the hilarious to the helpful, here are the “#”s we loved the most during NYFW:

#NYFW: The most broad and most obvious hashtag for fashion week, search this acronym for any and all photos, stories and tid-bets about fashion week.

#MADE: This is the tag for fashion week activity and shows taking place at Milk Studios.

#MBFW: We used this hashtag to identify any of the New York Fashion Week activity that happened at Lincoln Center, and was sponsored by Mercedes Benz.

#menswear: If you’re looking to take a little break from the onslaught of gowns, make up and sky-high heels, search this hashtag to see what’s trending in the world of men’s apparel. Highlights come from GQ magazine, Valet, and IFBcon panelist SartoriallyInc.

#streetstyle: Use this hashtag for quick access to all the amazing style happening off the runways.

#chictothenextlev: This one doesn’t make sense unless you watch this. We love how scarily true-to-life it is.

What hashtags did you use during #NYFW? Even if you aren’t in NYC (and maybe especially if you are not), hashtags are a fun and easy way to track your favorite fashion events and happenings.

[Image via shutupilovethat's Instagram account.]

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When it comes to New York Fashion Week, it’s not just the runway presentations that I look forward to. Meeting bloggers and learning more about their fashion week experiences is a highlight of this week.

In between shows and events, the IFB team was able to chat with fashion bloggers about surviving New York Fashion Week, what social media apps they use and more.

What are your fashion week survival essentials?

“Flats or flat boots- They are a must! Battery charger, camera, snacks are also in my purse right now. ” – HonestlyWTF

“I always keep a pair of flats in my bag. I carry a ridiculous over-sized bag because while you are out, you end up picking swag and treats along the way. Also, I carry sharpies with my name on it, I Spy DIY, and give them out to people I meet so people remember who I am and go back to my website. It’s a crafty little tool!”- Jenni Radosevich

How do you use social media when you are at shows or at events?

“We use Instagram alot! We like to Instagram 3-5 photos for each show because it’s really important to show our readers what’s going on visually at these shows. Plus, we also live-tweet the shows.” – Honestly WTF

“I’m a very visual person so I like using Instagram. I like having a visual stream and share them.” – Nicolette Mason

“Facebook, twitter, and Instagram! I use them all.” – Kassandra

“I am a big fan of Twitter, and I like to be tweeting out about what I am doing and where I’m going. Also Instagram is a must. It’s instant gratification in terms of producing visual content. You can see  the runway shows, and what people are wearing. It’s great.” – Jenni Radosevich

What’s the best part about using social media during fashion week?

Fashion week is definitely a whirlwind so I use social media to stay up-to-date. I use Hootsuite to keep all my streams hooked up and it literally saves my life.” – Krystal Bick

“With social media, it’s so easy to share and send information or photos from the runway to my readers and colleagues. Getting them in real-time makes my life so much easier.” – Nicolette Mason

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If you’ve been following us on Instagram, you know that our IFB and EatSleepDenim Instagram accounts have been flooded with shots from New York Fashion Week. Equipped with our cameras and phones, the IFB team has literally hit the streets of New York hard, searching out for your favorite bloggers and editors. So far, we’ve spotted See Jane, the Man Repeller, This Time Tomorrow… Even Garance Dore! Not to mention the various designers we’ve been lucky to see at Milk Studios. Peter Som, Wayne, Calla, Suno, Erin Fetherston. Phew, we’ve been busy gals!

What bloggers do you want to see? Which ones should IFB track down and snap a quick photo?

Take a look at some of our favorite Instagram shots and don’t forget to follow IFB along here (ESD over here).

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So, you’ve got your camera, you’ve got your gear, you’ve got your passes to all the shows you want to see at Fashion Week SS’12. You’re standing in the pit, waiting for the lights to go down, and all of the sudden you realize that you’ve never shot a runway show before, you’ve got no idea what the proper camera settings are for this sort of thing, and you start to panic. This panic is, of course, not in any way ameliorated by the fact that everyone around you has grotesquely enormous lenses plus lens extenders plus massive lens hoods and some really sturdy looking tripods and gear crates and they all seem to be speaking French or have some cool, vaguely European accent and, sweet Jesus, the smell in the pit can be totally overwhelming because most of these French/quasi-European cameramen have been working eighteen hours a day for the last week and probably haven’t even had the time to take a shower.

You’re just a blogger, you start thinking, you just bought your DSLR and new zoom lens and you’re just not ready for this at all. The lights go down and one of those smarmy, smelly, way-more-experienced-at-this-sorta-thing-than-you Frenchmen yells, “Please uncross your legs,” the high beam Lyko lights blaze to life above your head and the first model steps out of that door…
Fear not! I briefly went through this same moment of panic on the first day of New York Fashion Week. Luckily, you’ve got a brain, you’ve got a camera, and you’ve got a very simple problem to solve. About the only thing you need to be sure you do is freeze motion. That’s it. You just don’t want the models or their clothing to be blurry from movement. There are a couple of ways to do this. What most photographers do is set their shooting mode to Shutter Priority (which you can read about here) and set their chosen shutter speed to about 1/500th of a second, although the faster the better.

What I did all week was use Aperture Priority.  Shooting at f/4, on the 105mm end of my zoom lens (a 24mm-105mm was the longest lens I had and was more than enough for most of the shows, depending on what spot I got in the pit), allowed me to get a relatively shallow depth of field to make the model pop a bit more out of the background.  Shooting at ISO 3200 allowed me to keep my shutter speeds in the 1/800th of a second to 1/1600th of a second range so I don’t have a single blurry shot from the entire week.  Setting my AF point to the center point ensured that I always kept the model in the center of the frame and the focus directly on her.

Both Av and Tv modes do require a bit of tweaking while you’re shooting as well.  For the most part I kept my exposure compensation at +2/3 of a stop; when you’re shooting RAW (which you should be, leave a comment below if you’d like to receive a very long and involved answer as to why you should not ever, ever, ever shoot JPEGs for any photos you really want to look top-notch) you want your files to be just slightly overexposed (again, leave a question in the comments as to why this is but expect an answer that involves sensels, IC digital conversion, and probably a very long rant regarding just why oh why digital camera manufacturers still base their exposure systems around a 19th century exposure system that was intended for film and silver halide crystals; steel thyself for a geek-out).  This +2/3 EV compensation was just fine for the most part, but when a model was wearing something black or dark in color I generally returned to +/-0 or even -1/3 EV compensation to keep their skin from blowing out and appearing overexposed.

And that’s just about it, pretty simple really.  After the first two shows I had developed a number of presets in Lightroom that I could apply to an entire batch of photos which made the photo editing and turn around significantly faster.  Leave comments below if you’ve got any questions about my equipment, settings, or Lightroom presets.

[Photos by Nando Alvarez]

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