One of the things I took away from Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in February was an enormous respect for professional fashion photographers. Whether it’s the official ramp photographers on the media riser or the paparazzi outside the tents, the job is not easy. Lots of waiting, lugging around heavy equipment, jostling for position and, despite all the craziness, getting fantastic shots. So I was excited when Getty Images, house photographer for Spring/Summer Fashion Week, contacted us about interviewing one of their photographers.

Andrew Walker has been photographing celebrities for a decade now and also does fashion photography, having covered the runway, parties and backstage action at Fashion Week for the last 5 years. This year he was the official photographer for IMG, the event organizers, and was tasked with capturing every aspect of the week. We sat down for a while between shows.

Andrew fell in love with photography while he was at school and although his degree was in Writing, he took every photography course they had on offer. After school, though, he moved away from photography. He was an art director in New York when 911 happened and soon after was laid off from his job. He decided that this was the opportunity to go back to his calling. He has friends in the music industry so a lot of his initial work was with bands, both cover art and live concerts, and this is still his favorite subject matter. Through the band photography and doing portraits for actor friends he built an impressive portfolio that got him where he is today.

He is best known for his incredible portraiture, so I was interested to know how he made his subjects comfortable in front of the camera. He explained using the example of some corporate portraits he did for a law firm. He likes to chat to the subject during the shoot about something other than the photos, “I put the camera down. ‘Did you see the game last night?’ Blah blah blah. Click!”. And he says it sometimes just takes time: “Almost always, after 5 or 10 minutes, people realize, ‘this is ok’. So by the end of the session they are comfortable”.

Talking to Andrew it’s also obvious how his friendly, laid back personality puts his subjects at ease. Modestly, he puts it this way: “I’m not as intense as a lot of the other photographers I know”.

Of course, I had to ask about equipment. His favorite piece of gear is his Nikon D3S camera body, which he says is the best camera he’s ever used because of its sensor and ability to shoot in low light. He likes fixed focal length lenses “for playing around”, but for the professional work he absolutely has to have the flexibility of a zoom. He has 14-24mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses with him at Fashion Week to cover all the bases.

He uses an iMac for his post processing and is still surprised at how much time he spends in front of a computer. But that’s one of the consequences of going digital and being able to take hundreds or even thousands of pictures in a day. He described trying to capture the atmosphere as photographers swarmed around Sarah Jessica Parker. “I had a slow shutter speed, really just trying to catch someone else’s flash on her face. I took 50 pictures right there, and I deleted 48 of them”.

We talked about the way that blogging is blurring the line between pro and amateur photography at Fashion Week. In amongst the serious photographers with serious equipment on the media riser, you frequently see a blogger standing with a point and shoot. I once even saw someone with a cellphone taking pictures from the riser. Andrew says the pros sometimes find this irritating, but they know that the quality difference is so big that the “cream will rise to the top”.

Andrew’s single most important piece of advice to amateur photographers? Use the rule of thirds for composition. This is explained quite nicely on Wikipedia — imagine your frame divided up into 9 equal areas and put the focal point of the picture in one of the places where the lines that divide these areas intersect.

Thank you Andrew for taking the time to chat with us. It was a thrill to sit down in the midst of Fashion Week and hear the perspectives of a great professional photographer.

Getty was kind enough to give us a few of Andrew’s photos for this post (including the one I used for the background). Be sure to click the individual pictures to see a larger version — they really deserve some extra real estate on your screen.

This one illustrates the rule of thirds quite nicely, and I love that the focal point is the group of models that are further away.

We have only seen this venue when it was packed full of people, so this is a great perspective. The calm before the storm.

I am far too hung up on keeping the horizon horizontal. The angle of this photo and the lens distortion makes the movement come to life.

This is often the view from our vantage point at the shows, turned to an advantage here as Andrew uses the audience to frame the model.

Again the angle somehow creates movement, and the runway on the diagonal makes such a visual impact.

Visit Andrew’s online portfolio to see more great photography.