Photographing in the pit at London Fashion Weekend, standing inches apart from the next photographer and unable to move around, change your angle, or control the scene in any way - how do you make sure you get the shot and also ensure your work stands out from that of the photographers around you? This was the challenge we set for a group of photographers and bloggers - many of whom had never shot a fashion show before, and the results are sublime...

Firstly, muchas gracias to Canon for letting us throw this opportunity out to the Gather.ly community. We love to be able to offer unique and valuable experiences to fresh creative talent, and the chance to shoot a runway show at a national fashion event really fits the bill! In addition to photographing the show, our creatives were also lucky enough to be able to attend a talk with photographer Tony Wellington to get some tips and inspiration before being let loose with their cameras.

As an experienced fashion photographer, both on the runway and in the studio, Tony had many pearls of wisdom to offer our crew - from how to work alongside stylists and make up artists, to how he accidentally got into the business. All great stuff, and after getting the opportunity to pick Canon's brains for practical shooting tips, we were herded off to collect our photographer's passes and on to the show...

I'll openly admit that I'm not the most fashion forward of the Gather.ly team, so I'd never actually been to fashion show before, let alone experienced it from the photographer's pit. With tiers of benches for punters set up on either side of an immaculately lit runway, I was surprised at how small the pit actually was, with photographers all arranged in careful formation and unable to move around during the show. The lighting was beautiful though, and the pit perfectly placed at the end of the runway to experience each look for the longest time and from the prime position.

We saw four different trends during the show, but with each one lasting less than 5 minutes and no breaks to take stock of what of they'd captured, our photographers really needed to stay on their toes and make every single shot count in an unfamiliar and challenging environment.

I'll let the photographs speak for themselves, but well done to everybody who came along - the results are awesome!

But hang on, we're not quite done with Fashion Weekend yet - this is only part one. As we speak we've got three very talented collage artists doing some very exciting things with the photos our lovely bunch shot at the show. We cannot wait to see where they take them, so keep your eyes peeled for the next episode...