Fashion Week is a frenzy when you’ve got the top industry personalities in the one place at the one time. You’ve got all the media trying to get one killer shot and they’re all fighting for the best seat in the house to do so. Predominately you see this outside with the street style photographers or inside on the runway amongst the pit. But what you don’t see is all the chaos backstage; where the photographers are fighting (literally) to get the top models to themselves.
Sitting as a fly on the wall it’s extremely interesting to observe the politics of it all. The many photographers being paid the big bucks from various publications to be the one to get that shot becomes somewhat of a sport. But when you have big magazines and networks fighting for the position such as the likes of Vogue and Harpers, it can get quite fierce, quite fast.
As much as the designers invite select media backstage, they’re typically only paying one photographer to cover the show. So when someone gets in their way, they’ll let you know.
Basically what went down behind the scenes today was a bit of a biff of some sorts between the one photographer and another. Specifically, the designer’s photographer and another publication.
Both were trying to get the shots but kept backing into each other, yet they each stood their ground, adamant not to move. It was only when a member from the PR team intervened that the issue was resolved. The guy from the other publication was told to stand down, priority first and foremost given to the later.
Meanwhile, all the time they spent swearing at each other was wasted as the photographers around them continued to shoot and dominated the post runway footage.
We expect the paparazzi out the front and those following celebrities can get quite forceful, even those in the media pit (the group of photographers at the end of the runway) tread on each other’s toes; pushing and shoving their competition sideways. So it should come to no surprise they’re just as gnarly backstage, but you’d think they’d have a common decency, if not respect for the designer themselves to be civil and professional.
Some of the best images which surface from backstage anyhow are typically the ones from the understated photographer. The one who creeps around quietly, making no fuss. It’s all about being creative and it helps if you know the models; that way you can laugh and have a bit of fun – essentially getting the fun and quirky shots where the models are relaxed, that no one else has access too.
