Fashion Photography Skills: 9 Amazing Ways To Boost Them
Updated on October 31, 2022 in Photography by Alifiya Mustafa
Many Fashion Photographers dream of huge budget photoshoots with expensive lighting and live glamorous, adventurous, and exciting lives. But the dreams are far from reality. However, in this article, I will be giving you some meaningful fashion photography tips to get the chance at your success in the industry.
If we look at the statists from FASHION UNITED – The fashion industry contributes 4% of the total market share and is worth $406 billion.
Fashion is the first love of most people’s lives because fashion is something that defines the life of a person, event, or time. In the 21st century, fashion has become the symbol of status, confidence, wealth, and well-being. Many people use fashion as a statement describing their personality.
When professional Fashion Photographers shoot a model presenting different fashion trends, they need to make sure that they are not just capturing a human being and a few pieces of clothes and jewelry, but they are shooting all of these symbols and statements in their fashion photography.
If you are a photographer, then you already know how a photo can tell a story. Your style, time, weather, and background all say what you are trying to convey. Mainly, the stories from beauty photography one can define could be happy, gloomy, dark, sensitive, emotional, powerful, and thousands more.
When working in the fashion industry, fashion photographers need to be very specific that they capture a photo exactly in a way that fashion wants to present itself.
What is the Difference Between Fashion and Trends?
There is a very thin line between these two sets of syllables. Where the ‘Trend’ is a drop, ‘Fashion’ is the entire ocean containing several categories.
The Trend usually indicates the things that are popular at a specific time, but Fashion indicates some popular and unique styles of hair, make-up, jewelry, and even the ways in which one carries itself.
In fashion photography, where Trend just tells us about the clothing that might go out of trend whenever a new trend arrives. Fashion on the other hand never goes out of style but keeps on modifying.
Importance of Photography in the Fashion Industry
People are 60% more likely to remember something in the form of a visual. Fashion is the hunger that never vanishes, and people want to see more and more of it. To spread fashion to the world, photography plays an important role.
People follow celebrities with good fashion sense, search videos for the best fashion lookbook, and save thousands of pins on Pinterest just to keep up with the fashion. And they all get it just by looking at High fashion photography! Photography is the lungs of the fashion industry to reach people globally.
9 Tips for Fashion Photographers to Steal the Show!
Fashion Photography in itself is an art that takes years to master. With these 9 important tips, you will be able to improve on the areas of your Fashion Photography.
1. Keep Clear Communication With Your Client
When you are in Fashion Photography, communication is a powerful element in a photoshoot. You deal with many clients that have different requirements and different opinions. Collaboration with your model and the client is the key when you want your photos to come out right and get instant approval.
If you try to pursue everything your way in your fashion photography career, that might take you in another direction. To work in the same direction where your client wants to go will fulfill your client satisfaction along with great recognition.
Ask them the questions about how many styles they will be needing in the photoshoot, what would be the deadline, and what all editings and color additions you can do with their photographs.
2. Choose the Best Camera Brand
In Fashion Photography, the camera is the most essential tool for any photographer. If you do not have a camera, you can’t be a photographer – and if you do not have a camera from a good camera brand, then you can’t be a better photographer.
Especially in High fashion photography, choosing a good camera can make the most out of your potential. What brand you use matters a lot in the industry as there are many photographers owning the best tool to capture the best clicks.
3. Location Hunting
In fashion photography, location is the backbone of your photoshoot. Where and for how long you are shooting can help you develop a good strategy beforehand. Your location could be indoor, outdoor, at height, or at lower planes.
Knowing your location in fashion photography can help you to schedule the photoshoot accordingly in case you are looking for natural lighting and good angles.
If your client needs the Fashion photoshoot to be done in the natural lighting, you need to know about the location prior to the shoot, because if you start the hunt in the morning and finish-off by the evening – that would not make any sense as the natural lighting would be shifted entirely.
It is easier to plan fashion photography if your client already has a location in mind. But if they do not, it is better to suggest some according to the needs. For example, if your client is looking for someplace fresh and breezy, a beach would make a lot of sense rather than a highway.
4. Ask for the Inspiration Photos
Your fashion photography would become so much easier when you will have inspiration photos from your client. Ask them for the photos with the kind of lighting they would like to see in their photos, the posture of the model, or the props and colors that they would like to add.
Doing this is much better than clicking thousands of random photos just to get rejected as those are not guaranteed to fulfill the expectations. Having the inspiration by the side in fashion photography gives you an outline to work with. You can definitely add your own style and ideas in fashion photography but, without changing your client’s story.
5. Select Correct Props
Fashion Photography majorly includes the use of disparate props. Working with props is risky as one wrong selection can turn your professional photoshoot into a fancy dress show! Props are added to compliment your actual focus of the photoshoot.
The selection of props can either make or break your fashion photography shoot. Make sure that your props are not overwhelming or taking the focus away from the actual thing.
It is your client who is asking you to use a certain prop that you think is ruining your photoshoot, so I recommend you trust your skills and discuss your concern.
6. Find Inspiration to Make an Impact
If you are new to Fashion Photography and still exploring your own style, then it is a great idea to find inspiration in things around you. It could be books, movies, nature, people and maybe in the next thing you see right now!
Taking inspiration from outer and inner realities is a common practice professional photographers are doing for years in the fashion photography industry. Having your own style and presenting them in your photos is unique and an excellent way to create your very own creative portfolio to mesmerize the clients.
7. Build a Team of Correct People
Behind every successful person, there are the hands of many! You can’t be successful if you start doing everything on your own. There are always a few things that should be left for others to do in a better way.
Being a professional photographer, a camera from a good brand is just not enough. You need people who can communicate with your clients to collect the data, people who can visit different locations to select the best one, and obviously – the photo editing team.
You may choose to do some of the things on your own, but doing everything simultaneously can lead you to nothing.
Choose the people who love doing what they do, the people who support you, and in return create a good environment for them. A good team always ends up creating success stories.
8. Send Your Best Selected Photos to Your Clients to Choose From
At the end of the photoshoot, you will be having thousands of photos clicked with you. And, your perception may be entirely different from your client’s. For example, if your client is a designer – he might prefer a photo in which his dress looks good while being a photographer, you might look at more technical aspects of a photo. Fashion Photography allows for that.
I recommend that you create a photo sheet to share rather than giving all the thousands of photos to your client which could be very time-consuming and confusing.
Remove the photos which are too dark, blurry, or with reflections, and select the best ones that you like. Let’s say, you can send 15 photos from each shoot.
Adobe Bridge is one of the great tools that can help you create the content in one place easily in the form of file formats that you have used.
9. Never Settle of Trying New Things
Fashion never settles, it keeps on updating and modifying. So, there is no way you can go out-of-fashion in Fashion photography. Keeping up with the trends and trying out new things is the only way to survive in the market and augment your style.
You might find one way that works best for you but you should never back off in trying new things. Experiment with new props, new photo-editing software, new camera lenses, colors, and even the source of inspiration. Failures and risks are all part of success that should never leave your mind.
Conclusion
Fashion Photography is all about understanding fashion, implementing correct ways, keeping patience, and never stopping to learn new things.
Becoming a Fashion Photographer/ Beauty Photographer is not an easy task, but sticking with a few great tips can take you a long way. Understanding the need of clients and not losing their own style is an amazing balance a Fashion Photographer needs to keep.
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I hope that these tips will give you a path line to follow, despite you being a professional or an amateur. I’d also highly recommend reading Make Photography to uplift your fashion photography.
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