Advice for outdoor hair photography

[bfra]

Apologies for my first post being a "please help" post, however having read posts on the forum before, I know there is a great knowledge base here.

A contact of mine has asked me to help him, and a group of fellow hairstylists. They want photos of their models from the waist up, with the hair being the main focus....and they want to shoot outdoors, perhaps near a graffiti wall or near the beach.

My kit consists of a Nikon D7000, a kit lens 18-105, a 70-200 2.8 Nikon lens, a 1.7 and 2.0 teleconverter, a SB-600 flash, wireless flash remote trigger, 1 fold out reflector and a recently purchased ring flash.

As an enthusiast with no real training, I generally photograph sports and wildlife. This is a whole new kettle of fish for me.

I don't want to let them down as they will be putting in hours of hair styling work and a make-up artist for the shoot.

I would really appreciate any advice.

Cheers,
Brad

[Tannin]

Hi Brad, thanks for asking an interesting question!

I think you need to bite the bullet and tell them that they need the right sort of photographer, which isn't you. Tell them that you don't mind having a go as second lens, but that they really owe it to themselves to line up a photographer with some experience and skill in this particular branch of the craft. What they are asking of you is just like asking a manicure guy to do the hair styling, or asking a hair stylist to design the shoes.

I am not saying you couldn't learn to do that stuff! But it is unreasonable to expect that you will be good enough to produce results that you and they are happy with unless you have at least some experience.

[Shelley]

Jeez, that is a hard one for sure. You need to be confident and if the hair is the focus, the light placement would be important I would imagine. One of the things I struggled with as I was always asked to shoot stuff other than birds. I can now, but you have to learn different stuff and I hyperventilated because I knew I couldn't deliver the same shots as my bird shots (which took me ages to get in my own time).

I wish you luck and agree with Tony.

[ricstew]

Practice.......take some hats outside and see what you can come up with........check the time of day wanted as well as the venue and see where the light is. Try for the natural light look unless you are confident with your artificial lights.......the 70-200 would work if you have enough room. Use the tripod.
Then critically check your images and decide if you can do it......
cheers
Jan

[kiwi]

Are they paying ?

[ricktas]

I hope once you get advice, you start joining in more and give something back to the members as well.

And I agree with Jan. Practice! The more photography you do of a particular style the more you learn. We can teach you the technical, but without being there and knowing the exact ambient light, conditions etc, we can only do a best guess at actual settings.

[bfra]

Thanks for the responses everyone. It's not a paid job, but i'll get a few free haircuts down the track. He is planning the day to take several hours so i will get a range of light. Most likely it will be the rubbish midday light.
I have asked if I can take him to the location and roll off some shots of him or a colleague. touch up the images in the afternoon and then give them a few prints. This way they can see an example of what I can (or cannot do) and thn safley decide if its what I want. I think he is between trying to get me involved and also working within a small or non-existent budget.
This will also give me some images to review and see where i can improve them.
I'll update on my progress if anyone is interested.

[bfra]

For anyone who is interested, the day got canceled by the organizer about a week out. Hopefully they will try again and I'll have a bit more practice under my belt.