Fine art and fashion photographer Michael Gilbert splits his time between his Hawaii studio and shooting assignments overseas, including his adventures in the city of Paris (where he has a second studio). When he’s roaming around the cosmopolitan capital, Gilbert always brings his Tamron 70-300mm VC lens so he can most effectively blend in with the stunning scenery and street crowds. “Shooting in Paris is interesting, because it’s one of the most densely populated and packed cities in the world,” he says. “You can’t just go wandering around as a photographer with your models — it’s usually too congested — but you still want to get all of those iconic places and sights. You have to develop a technique that allows you to still capture those scenes but circumvent all the difficulties surrounding them.”

One of Gilbert’s strategies is to wake up before the sun rises. “For my shot of a girl running in front of the Eiffel Tower, I had to get up really early so I could be on-site at 6am — before people are running around on the streets,” he recalls. “You can’t get more iconic than this shot: The girl is in front of the Eiffel Tower wearing a French hat and dressed in all black. The pigeon in the shot is flying and coming in and out of focus, while the background is sort of in focus, but not quite — it’s really trippy. This image really shows what that 70-300 lens is capable of.”

Gilbert also relates that it’s important for him to meld seamlessly with the city landscape when he’s strolling on the Parisian streets. “I travel with what looks like a gray supermarket bag, reinforced from the inside with some fiberglass,” he says. “I put my camera gear in there and sometimes have a French stick, or baguette, peeking out of the top of the bag. I’m able to simply get on the subway and go. I get to a place like the Eiffel Tower, sneak a chunk of bread, take out my camera gear, and I’m ready to start shooting!”

To remain as unobtrusive as possible, Gilbert also needs a lens that’s not going to bog him down — which is where the Tamron 70-300mm comes into play. “If you’re a fashion person like I am, a 70-300mm lens at f/2.8 is the ideal lens — but try to carry that piece of glass around Paris all day,” he says. “Plus your plane of focus is about a foot and a half, so that’s what you’re going to get all of the time. What Tamron has done, from a photographer’s perspective, is create this compact lens that has a stabilizing system built in, but it’s no larger than many regular zooms.”

This compactness allows Gilbert to go where perhaps other photographers can’t without being noticed. “I can hop on the Metro at 6am, go on location, and shoot away,” he says. “In many ways, I simply seem like a passerby without a whole bunch of tripods or one of those huge lenses — a dead giveaway that can make you look like a tourist. That’s a major deal if you’re traveling these days; you don’t want to be singled out. If I had gone to Egypt this year — which I was supposed to do until the trip got canceled — I could be a target with one of those big lenses.”

Gilbert also doesn’t require an f/2.8 aperture when he’s out and about. “With today’s high-end cameras, I can zip around the city shooting at ISO 800,” he says. “It used to be that you had to leave your cameras on ISO 100 or 125 for the best quality. Now ISO 800 is what ISO 100 used to be — and Tamron’s designers created this lens for the 21st century so that it’s current and up to date with this technology.”

Gilbert keeps the 70-300’s Vibration Compensation on during his Parisian promenades. “When I do this kind of work — what I call ‘fashion illustration’ — this lens with the VC still allows me to shoot handheld at 1/125th of a second and get everything I need without any loss at all from any type of shake. I can go even lower than that — I’ve captured great images at 1/60th and 1/30th of a second — but when I’m out there working and don’t have a lot of time, I know I’m safe at 1/125th. The VC makes a big difference: If you’re at 70mm and cruising around, then zoom to 300mm at 1/125th of a second without stabilization, it’s not going to happen, or it’s going to be hit and miss. The longer you zoom out, the more shake you get — it’s proportional.”

The 70-300’s new Ultrasonic Silent Drive (USD) also pays off for Gilbert. “I use autofocus all the time,” he says. “With the way I shoot, I do a lot of track-focusing: I don’t totally crop in the camera for my fashion work, I just back up a bit and follow my subject. The camera’s set up for focusing within that area, and with this lens, it’s incredibly fast and snaps right in.”

Gilbert is also usually able to get back to his studio for a croissant and coffee by 7am because he’s got his game plan mapped out way ahead of time. “I’m able to work extremely fast,” he says. “When I go to do a shoot, it’s already in my head — then, like a cinematographer, I go out and execute it. I’ll sketch it out and say, ‘I need to be at this location at this time because I know the light is coming in at this angle and will bounce off that particular big white wall of marble and reflect into the model’s face, so I don't need a reflector.’ Or I’ll know her face is going to be backlit, so I’ll need a little fill flash. Of course, magic beyond your control often happens, but in general, this works for me.”

Gilbert also thanks the weathersealing on his camera for getting him through his Paris fashion shoots. “People at WPPI were puzzled when they heard that weathersealing is so important for me when I’m shooting in Paris,” he laughs. “But you have to realize, by the time I get home after a shoot, that French stick that was peeking out of my ‘camera bag’ is probably all gone at that point — and there are crumbs all over my camera!”