I’m going through a lot of old magazines ripping out the photos I like and tossing the other 99.5% of the paper.

One thing I noticed in the stack of what I’ve kept, the models don’t look at the camera very often. I sometimes tell new models “don’t look at the camera unless you mean it.”

I look at all of these thousands of images in the magazines I’m tossing out, and I have a visceral reaction to compelling lighting, compositions, dances of color on the page. When I look at a photo in which the model is just standing there deer in headlights waiting for the shutter to click, supremely unconfident, no matter what is going on in the rest of the image, I have a strong dislike for the whole. If it is an interesting setting, I am even angry at the photographer for wasting it on an uncompelling subject.

To me, photography is only a rush when it feels challenging, and if the model just stands there looking at the lens, waiting to have their picture taken, it is uninteresting. I don’t like when they submit to the process, when they are having their picture taken rather than being interesting.

Unless you have the confidence to stare down the lens or tell a story, don’t go near it, the lens will know you are weak. The lens is predatory. To use it is always to be hunting for something. When the prey is immediately submissive, the hunt is dull.

Decoration is a craft. Art is an anti-science. The pinnacle height of achievement in a craft is the perfect modification of a material into a vision. The pinnacle height of achievement in an art is the perfect modification of a vision into a metaphor. Some things can be both. Art cannot exist without craft. Craft cannot exist without art. Yet there is a vast difference from the goals of artists and craftspeople. Craft has a finite goal, the production of something tangible. Art has an infinite goal, the induction of something intangible. Craft relaxes. Art excites.

This question was posted to an online forum:

“What makes High fashion photography?”

My Answer:

The difference I think you’re reaching for is catalog vs. editorial style. In catalog photography you shoot the entire collection. In an editorial style you try to sum up the entire collection in a short series of images.

In real editorial fashion photography, at a purist level, you look at what is now and what is past and you create a very selective visual essay. It doesn’t always work that way. Most magazines want their advertisers’ products represented in the editorials, so what you see in Vogue etc. is not normally true editorials because the editors are influenced by a need to keep their employers happy.

“High fashion” is a bad translation of the French “Haute Couture,” which is a very specific kind of clothing, and actually translates to “high sewing.” Haute Couture is the very highest level of fashion in terms of craft and quality workmanship. They don’t sell it at Macy’s. They barely sell it at Bergdorf Goodman. It’s one of a kind pieces, usually made for a specific person. It is actually a legal distinction and only a small group of fashion design companies are allowed to call their work “Haute Couture.”

If you think about it, becoming successful in fashion is a lot like becoming a rock star.

• It all comes down to having a great band behind you. You truly cannot do it alone.
• If you don’t have talent, the best guitar in the universe isn’t going to help you.
• It’s more about the vibe than precision, but you have to have the command of precision to create the vibe.
• You just have to keep playing and be out where people can see your work, and that’s how you become popular. You cannot both be genuine (and therefore have staying power) and start out playing in stadiums, just as a photographer shouldn’t start out in major international publications (I’m slowly starting to realize).
• You must get out there and network.

This was my response to a photography forum post asking “what is an editorial?”

An editorial tells a story, argues a point, focuses on an issue. Like a written editorial, a photographic editorial expresses a position on an idea. It is an editorial comment, a note from the artist or editor or publisher. Someone is communicating an idea through the images.