I took this series of photographs on Tuesday at the AZIZ Salon in north-west Austin. Their grand opening of this new location at the Arboretum was timed to coincide with this week’s fashion events. AZIZ got the social buzz going; it was packed; they had lots of gifts and the alcohol was flowing. But the thing that I remember most from that night is this one particular model. I don’t know her name but she was decidedly unmodel like, which is meant to be a compliment. It seems like so many of the models are trained or they believe that they should look stone faced as they walk down the runway. The Mr. Spock school of modeling. Don’t show any emotion. This model from the AZIZ show was delighted and joyful. She smiled from ear to ear and had a great time. The audience responded and really connected with her joyfulness. You can tell from the reaction of the crowd (which is also fun to look at). I haven’t seem too many models literally danced down aisle.

I’ve posted several blog posts this week on the fashion events going on around town. This was the most challenging photographic situation, so far. I thought I blew the shots; I was surprised by what I found. This may be one of the few times where the images look better on the big computer screen than on the camera’s small LCD. I’ll post more images from the AZIZ later and will explain why I found so it challenging. Some of these challenges were due to the mistake I made even before I started shooting.

Please make sure to click on the photographs to see a larger image and hover over the photos to see the exposure details.