Fashion photography should never be sexy
One question I’m often asked is what do you need to shoot fashion. You can shoot with any sort or make of camera body for fashion-based photography as it’s not as specialised as say wildlife or sports photography where you need specific things like high shutter rates and fast focusing. One of the most important things is to shoot in RAW and most modern cameras give you this option. The reason to shoot in RAW is to give you the ability to extract more out of the file when you come to edit the images in post using Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop as an example for editing software.
The three go-to lenses for most fashion work are the 35mm, 50mm and 85mm focal lengths. You could also use a zoom lens that covers this focal range. This would make it easier and save you the cost and weight of carrying three lenses as opposed to one. It depends on you and if you like the look of prime lenses with fast apertures or don’t mind shooting with a zoom.
The 35mm lens is a storytelling lens allowing you to capture more of the location in your images. It’s a lens to be careful with though as if you start shooting a little to close you can start to distort your subject and this will not always look good. The 50mm is a good all-round lens and can work for both half-length body shots and full-length shots and does not give you many distortion issues. The 85mm is the more traditional fashion lens. Giving you the ability especially if it’s a fast prime to isolate your subject from the background bringing more focus to the clothing. It also has the ability to compress your images bringing the background closer. A great lens too for studio beauty photography. Some people say to use a wide-angle when you’re in a small space, wide-angle lenses are a very specific lens for fashion and if you need one of these in a small space chances are you’re in the wrong space. Wide-angle lenses can be used to lengthen legs, distort perspective and create drama etc but be careful with these. Use the focal length lens that matches your intent is the best advice.
Genre
Many people just pick up a camera find a model and start shooting without understanding the fashion genre and then call it fashion photography. Understanding the different fashion genres will help you in many ways, the ability to understand a brief, being able to communicate with your model. Stating the genre you’re planning to shoot will give your model an understanding of what’s needed from them and help you direct the shoot.
Commercial fashion tells you what to think and is very easy to digest, it’s very soft, your lighting is broad and gentle. It’s very friendly and nothing too specific. People don’t have to think about it too hard. It appeals to a very wide audience. It’s a very good place to start and a lot of things you learn as a commercial fashion photographer will help you work in many other genres such as weddings and portraits. Keep an eye on current trends and this will keep you current.
The lines between commercial fashion and high fashion photography have unfortunately become blurred. This is partly due to clothing manufacturers marketing themselves as high fashion brands to appeal to a higher market audience when in fact what they produce is commercial fashion. This area of the fashion industry is mainly based around mass-produced clothing. Because of this photography followed, and photographers called it high fashion photography to appeal to the market place when in fact it is commercial fashion.
High fashion is more about specific pieces of clothing, these are usually made to measure one-off pieces. Costing not a few hundred pounds like commercial fashion but several thousand pounds. This is not a mass-produced piece of clothing but made to measure for specific clients. High fashion will appeal to a different audience to commercial fashion and someone very bespoke. It’s a very specific market in terms of not only your client but for publication with it not being as popular as commercial fashion. It will however give your photography a different direction and the suggestion is more subtle. The photography will allow you to be more creative in your approach and is more interesting to view with the locations helping with the story. It has to look very polished, and expensive and you are allowed to involve a little more emotion.
Beauty
Is different again, beauty is about skincare, hair care and general grooming. It’s about looking after yourself and being healthy. It’s not complicated and should always be based on showing great skin, hair and makeup. Beauty is by no way fashion but it is fashionable. Your lighting should be intentional and your post-processing guided by the client as too much editing may not appeal to a natural skincare brand.
Glamour is not fashion and I see too many people getting this wrong. Glamour is more about showing off the sexual allure of a person, making a person sexually attractive to the viewer. This usually involves more expression from a model and the poses are more provocative as are the locations. There is also the genre of look book photography. This genre is more about a more natural look. Models should not be overly made up and be in a more natural location. The lighting can also be more natural. The intention of a look book image is for the model and should be more honest, this is to give the model a natural representation to the person hiring them.
Fashion should never be sexy and fashion should never be sexualised.