Fashion photography puts focus on displaying fashion clothing, accessories, shoes and other items. It is more often conducted for advertisements or fashion magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, or Elle. Bruce Weber, one of the world’s most popular and influential fashion photographers began photographing ads and commercials for Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein in the late 1970s. Over the years, his photographs have appeared in Vanity Fair, American Vogue, Italian Vogue, French Vogue, and GQ, among others.
Bruce Weber underlines certain prominent fashion photography types
Catalog photography is the simplest fashion photography style. As its focus majorly tends to be to sell the clothing, the focus stays on the outfit. Catalog photography is a good place to start for fledging fashion photography, so that they can learn the basics before progressing to more complicated styles. The background of such photos is usually muted, such are white or grey. The props and accessories used also tend to be minimal. The models ideally strike varying poses to show off the features of the outfit. Lookbook is an offshoot of catalog photography, and it combines lifestyle photography with this style. In it, photographs of models are taken in authentic locations, while they wear the clothes to be advertised.
High fashion is another popular fashion photography style and it is something that people see frequently on their favorite magazine covers. Usually, high street fashion involves well-known supermodels to have an elaborate wardrobe and glamorous hairstyles to create a flawless image. The lighting, location, outfit, pose and all other components of the photograph should be in the ideal place so that the ultimate results look classy and appealing.
After high fashion comes street fashion or urban fashion. Hip hop and grunge are popular examples of urban fashion, which have now become mainstream street fashion styles. Street fashion is more rugged than high fashion. It tends to feature outfits that people wear on a daily basis, like shirts, denims and hoodies. Elegant dresses also may come under street fashion if they do not sacrifice on comfort. A lot of photographers use a longer lens to capture street fashion shots. This allows them to capture images from a distance, without making people feel self-conscious.
The fourth important fashion photography style is editorial photography. This style is found in newspapers and magazines. They typically accompany a text. These photographs may suggest a mysterious back story or tell a story themselves. In many cases, editorial fashion images tend to be part of a certain theme or concept. These photographs might also be related to a particular designer or model.
While fashion photography has existed for decades, this domain keeps changing with time. Any person belonging to this field has to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and techniques important to it. They can always check out the works of Bruce Weber and similar well-known fashion photographers for inspiration. His photographs are in the permanent collections of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. In addition to fashion photography, Bruce is keenly interested in photographing dogs as well. In fact, a pack of Golden Retrievers has accompanied Weber on his professional journey, and made their way into many of his professional and personal shots.
