"High Fashion Photography" ???

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."

establishing communication with the model is as important as their makeup getting on right

Some of my best recent pictures came when the model showed up early and I made him go with me to the diner while I ate lunch. As soon as we started shooting there was a connection and it all just flowed. Because we'd been hanging out talking for 20 minutes, we had a sense of each other. Communication is of terrific importance. Sometimes the camera is an obstacle to good work, and you have to just put it down and hang out until you click with the subject.

anyone remember Artbyte?

Over the years I've been influenced by a number of publications.

In the early 90's it was Wired. Kevin Kelly was driving the content and the world was changing. It was the multimedia revolution and each issue was a first class ticket from my east coast view of a lighthouse to the changing landscape of silicon valley. Every Nicholas Negroponte editorial changed something about the way I thought about the way things work or can work or should work. The first three years of Wired issues were really incredible.

After Wired I became an avid reader of Video Toaster User, which was a technical journal dedicated to the products from a company called NewTek. NewTek made 3D computer graphics affordable with Lightwave 3D. Through most of high school I was obsessed with computer animation and spent a lot of late nights setting up 5 second scenes that would take four or five days to render from small bitmaps and wire frame models to near-photorealistic clips. Video Toaster User was great for helping you figure out how to pull off complex looking effects with simple solutions.

When I was a freshman in college, I started reading 2600: The Hacker Quarterly quite a bit. Most media approaches the subject of hackers as if they're all one thing or all another thing. In reading 2600, I learned about hacker culture, how complex it is, how diverse the community has become. From the humble beginning when a model railroad club at MIT started referring to modification of their models as "hacking" to the bizarre misconceptions portrayed in films and television to the modest gatherings of offbeat technology enthusiasts around the world every first Friday of the month. The magazine brought be into contact with the hacker community and I have a lot of great friends because of that association, but today the publication seems far less relevant and I now recognize what a small slice of the larger hacker world it represents. Am I a hacker? Yes. Do I know a lot about computers? Not really. All artists are hackers, and all hackers are artists. It's just another name for explorers.

Then I found ArtByte. I think this was around 1998. Artbyte was about the crossover between art and technology. It talked about circuitry and robotics and multimedia and all those wonderful technological tools, but cross referenced those topics with the legitimate art world. There were reviews of light shows at the Guggenheim, long essays about where cinema was going, and just all sorts of exposes on how technology was being jammed together with culture all over the world. It ceased publication abruptly in late 2001. I don't know why for sure, but I suspect their offices were near ground zero. That magazine was extremely content rich. The way the writers spoke about ideas was uniquely inspiring. I think of all the magazines I've subscribed to in the last decade and a half, it was the one I most looked forward to reading.

For a couple years in between there I subscribed to Weekly Variety, the distilled outside town version of Hollywood's favorite trade publication, Daily Variety. I learned a lot reading it, but got busy and the back issues started to pile up without being even skimmed. It's a very dense magazine, and getting it on a weekly basis, when it has to compete with The New Yorker for eyeball time and the subscription price is around $250, it just wasn't worth it anymore. Like Wired though, since the Indie revolution played out, Variety seems less relevant, at least to me personally. Instead I just watch Sunday Morning Shootout on AMC every week.

Now I get a lot of fashion magazines. Italian Vogue, Exit, and Icon are my favorites. Exit was what I picked up the week I decided to leave grad school to become a fashion photographer. I subscribe to a bunch and pick up others on the newsstand. I like Oyster, which is an Australian fashion magazine. I also subscribe to Surface, which is more of a design magazine, but the articles are pretty good. There are quite a few that I follow. They get expensive when you pile them up, so I've taken to flipping through before buying to make sure there are innovative images.

There is a magazine called Make, which is all about personal technology empowerment. The do it yourself bible for the 21st century. My friend Ryan O'Horo has had his creations published in Make a few times.

I don't really have a favorite magazine right now. I keep waiting for the next early Wired or the next Artbyte to appear. Who couldn't use a monthly dose of mind blowing inspiration?

fashion photography theory and concepts #1

I am always looking for formulas and keys so good performances can be repeated. Sure you hit a good shot once in a while, but often it’s on a test and not an editorial so I can’t send the images out. Serendipity is great for art, but it has to be repeatable to be profitable. There is less difference between performing on stage before an audience and walking into your own gallery show than one might imagine. In both cases you must attempt to pre-cognize the experience of others. In both cases, getting it right in the shower doesn’t count. Some artists prefer to satisfy only their own needs and leave the viewer on the wind. I have gone to far too many art galleries and left confused to not give a decently explanatory label to the viewers of my own work, even if I make them look around for it a bit first. I feel indebted to the audience for taking the time and energy to view my work, and therefore strive to satisfy both my own needs as an explorer and to communicate my experiences on the journey to viewers as a reward for their own curiosity. Curiosity should always be encouraged.

There exists a requirement in the fashion photography I favor, that the model should exist in the environment of the image and be somewhat connected to that world. Most often when I find myself believing my work on a constructed image to have yielded a failure, it is the result of an apparent lack of connection between the model and the other things in the frame. If that is not the case, the second most common culprit is having failed to control the light. Both can be improved with practice, as my own work has shown. What I refer to as the model being connected to the world, director Richard Donner calls “verisimilitude,” meaning "the truth of the thing" or "self-truth."

There may be some universal formula for projecting how a model will play off a given prop or costume. I have not yet found it. Perhaps it is too complex and individualized to forecast. Possibly at least some generalizations could be divined, but then would their employment by an artist be detrimental to originality? I think such things are better left to instinct honed by experience, for my own work at least. Yet, still I wonder if there could be a primer written to guide outside of instinct. Can you bracket models and props like they do sports teams in a tournament?

I believe that tension, composition, and detail are the keys to a great image. The viewer must be presented with drama (or the equivalent), context, and a visual focal point in order to relate to most images. Drama is given by any notion of tension within a frame, whether that is interpersonal tension, spatial tension, or implied kinetic tension.

The story of the single frame must have a context, as all stories presented visually do. The context is revealed and highlighted (successfully or poorly) by the composition. In this use of the word “composition,” I mean the juxtaposition of complimentary and contrasting areas of color tone, hue, and saturation (or simply brightness in a black and white image). Void and filling shades and levels between them must be shaped to draw the viewer’s attention to your intended purpose in presenting the image. With multiple frames, a sequence of images, it’s a whole other ballgame.

The visual focal points are also of great importance, and without these details the image will appear totally meaningless. In photographing people, the visual focal points of an image almost always include the eyes. The detail need not be overpowering. It could be as simple as a green dot on two hairlines intersecting. What is important is the presence of an anchor of some sort. An image that is totally unfocused cannot ordinarily hold or even momentarily capture the viewer’s attention.

In most cases, a formulaic approach to fashion photography would be counterproductive. However, if one is conducting some sort of experiment to find the subconscious mechanics of one’s work, looking for patterns in the behavior of subjects would probably be useful. Finding such patterns would be a step in a long path to allowing for a conscious and controlled paradigm shift in production and visualization methods.

Andre Austin's Seminar - Notes

Today I went to a seminar about fashion styling, held by celebrity stylist Andre Austin.

He was very knowledgeable and candid.

A couple of notes on things that caught my ear as a photographer:

He said that commercial styling is like wardrobe styling for a movie, as you are creating a person from clothing, which I found interesting.

He also talked about acknowledging the financial investment required of a stylist for testing. For a small shoot, even if all the clothes are free, the stylist could easily spend $100 on cabs picking up and returning outfits.

Apparently, "metalics are in right now," which I had sort of noticed but was trying not to because I'm not crazy about people wearing metal, it just seems unnatural. I wonder if there is a psychological link between the metal sheen clothing and a need for armor in the post 9/11 environment. Sort of like SUV's. They aren't really tanks but they make people feel better.

He spoke briefly about the insecurity level of celebrities, especially artists, and their real need for attention and support on a set. I think probably every artist on a set needs attention and support, but he's right in that when celebrities don't get it they can cause trouble that will disrupt the shoot. So be nice and let them work at their own pace as much as possible, I suppose.

I'm feeling less guilty about mixing Canal Street discount clothing with the high end stuff, and I intend to go check out Target and H&M for some test shoot stock items.

Advice for new models.

This site has a lot of good information for new models: newmodels.com

Topics covered include: the players in the modeling industry, an introduction to professional modeling, should you go to modeling school, about model searches and conventions, height and professional modeling, all about TFP, all about race, sex and age in commercial print, how to apply to a model agency, how professional agency modeling works, how child modeling works, visa requirements for working in the USA, all about "mother agencies," about "Internet managers" and Internet agencies, the bogus Internet modeling agency scam, the Nigerian scam comes to modeling, and myths and reality about modeling scams.

The Rules of Filmmaking... an evolving list

Back when I was making movies a lot more frequently, I came up with a list of rules for better filmmaking. I like rules and handbooks and that sort of thing. Rules are, of course, meant to be broken, but you should understand the rule and why it exists before you trespass in its realm. I will go into detail about the specifics in a later post or posts.

The Rules of Filmmaking... an evolving list

Please do not repost this elsewhere online without a link back to the original page and a reference to the version number, or reprint for commercial purposes without the express written permission of the author. It can always be found at http://www.starfortress.com/filmrules.html

• Leave the location or stage in a better condition than you found it.
• Never forget your flashlight.
• Never forget your radio.
• The streets of Hollywood were never paved with gold. Make that your job.
• Never perform an actor's line.
• Always keep your crew well fed and watered.
• One sandbag per light indoors, two if you're outside.
• Watch your language, kids show up at the oddest times.
• Tagging someone with C-47's is not a crime unless you're caught in the act.
• Only the director may say or grant the authority to say "action," or "cut."
• Keep the assistant directors informed about EVERYTHING. Give them a department status report at least every 30 minutes. If something is going to be delayed or ready ahead of schedule then they should know that immediately.
• Never ask someone to do something you would not.
• Never be afraid to ask someone to do something you cannot.
• The set should be treated more like a temple where the filmmakers are the monks, and less like a saloon where the filmmakers are the customers.
• If you're not needed, be nearby.
• If there is not a phone list then compile one and distribute it. There are always movies down the road where you may want someone or someone may want you.
• Never let an actor take home a prop or costume that you cannot easily replace.
• Never pay for an investor's lunch.
• Never unplug an unfamiliar cable.
• The director should never hire or fire anyone directly unless it is their personal assistant.
• Filmmaking is definitely a collaborative process, but not so much a communal process. There needs to be a leadership structure like you would have on a ship.
• Never shoot in an actively hostile location.
• Master lighting with one source first.
• The lowest ranked person in the room is the most important one to have on your side.
• "In a crisis people need to feel like soldiers, not victims." - The West Wing
• Know all the rules (and what they mean) before you break them.
• When all else fails, ask yourself "What would John Ford do?"

version 3.2, released the 30th of October 2005
all versions (C) 2003-2005 C. Beckwith