I had been photographing the annual fashion show at Cornell University for several years and thought it would be interesting to photograph another college fashion show to see how they compared and differed. I discovered that Cazenovia College (about an hour from my home) also had an annual fashion show and indicated my interest in coming and photographing the show.

Well, it turned out their fashion show was the very same day as Cornell’s fashion show; so I had to decline.

That was last year.

This year (2012), Cazenovia’s show was scheduled for the weekend before Cornell’s. So I got to do both!

For the Cornell show, I’ve been focusing more on what happens behind the scenes (back stage), while I have an associate photographer photograph the runway show.

Since Cazenovia was going to have two sessions of the show (one in the afternoon, one in the evening), I decided I would photograph the afternoon show and then photograph the behind-the-scenes activities leading up to the evening show.

Photographing the afternoon runway show went well. But when I went back stage to photograph behind-the-scenes, I discovered that the designers and models were spread out into several different small rooms connected by narrow hallways.

Not only was it difficult to travel between rooms without bumping into designers and models, but my presence was *really* obvious in any of the individual small rooms, making candid photography nearly impossible.

At the Cornell fashion show, all the designers and models are in one huge room…making it quite easy to walk around and grab candids wherever you see something interesting going on.

Needless to say, I didn’t do much behind-the-scenes photography at Cazenovia (I left early) but I did grab a few shots. And the runway show itself featured some pretty eye-catching attire!

Some of my favorite photos from both the runway show and back stage are featured below…:-).

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