Shooting Fashion (Again)

Asia - Fashion Editorial Shoot
Originally uploaded by Ame Otoko

A little known fact about me is that when I was in college, one of my dreams was shooting fashion in New York. Looking back, I have no idea how I came up with this idea and how I intended to make it happen. I did, however, work at a portrait studio part time and shot for a high school yearbook photography studio after that, so I had access to the equipment I needed and put together a modest portfolio that was never going to get me to New York.

Fast-forward to today and I have realized that if there is money to be made in the portraiture business, you must also gain an edge in your presentation. And no style of photography is quite as edgy as fashion.

To me, fashion is about wardrobe, styling and location all coming together to create a theme. The best fashion photographers know instinctively what a model should wear, how a model should be made up and what location to shoot in. A mistake can be as tragic as wearing a polka dot tie with a striped suit.

Recently, I shot my first fashion shoot in, well, let’s just say a very long time. The model is a friend, so she was easy-going and generally went along with whatever I wanted to do. I had her pick wardrobe and she selected a very elegant gray dress.

I selected a location that would work with the elegant, classic style of the dress. At our local college, I found a couple of newer buildings which combine a modern architecture style while embracing the historic style of the rest of the college which was built in the late 1960’s. I picked specific locations with a lot of glass, concrete and steel, which I felt complimented the wardrobe style.

Finally, once I got the images home, I chose treatments that were cool (as in blue hued) with muted tones, that gave the pictures an even more retro-modern feel. A couple of the close-up images I decided to do in B&W as I felt the dress had a classic style that would work well in B&W.

Being able to shoot fashion is another tool a photographer can use to add to the style of images he/she can deliver to a client. As I found out, it takes practice and experimentation to come up with great fashion images, but in the end, it was a lot of fun and I’d like to be able to do more in the future.

Here are a few of the other images we captured on that day.