What are the ingredients of a fashion photograph? This question may be rarely asked, yet it's an important one to think about. After all, is fashion photography really about the technicalities, or is it about content?
Last month saw one of the coolest photo-themed light shows in New York City's history. In celebration of their 150th anniversary, Harper's Bazaar projected 150 iconic fashion photos directly onto the Empire State Building... and photographers were there to capture the scene.
My name is Jeremy Lebled, and I'm a fashion photographer. I recently just did a shoot to demo Leica's S Camera. My specialty is using just the sun to get a high-end studio look to photographs instead of using dozens of strobes.
What would fashion photos look like if the models in them were more... ordinary? French fashion stylist Nathalie Croquet recently decided to find out. She took a number of photos from the high fashion industry, recreated the sets, and stood in front of the camera herself as the model.
Zoe Spawton earns a living working as a waitress in Berlin. While setting up the restaurant's sidewalk furniture at 9am, the 29-year-old Australian photographer regularly encounters Ali, an 83-year-old man who always seems to dress fashionably and obviously takes great pride in his appearance.
After a few weeks of befriending Ali, Spawton began to document the man's outfits through portraits reminiscent of The Sartorialist. Soon, these portraits became a full blown project titled What Ali Wore.
Product photos for clothing lines typically feature generic, attractive models, since the point of the images is to make the clothes accessible and desirable to consumers. Yuekou, an online clothing store in China, has found great success by using a different approach: its photos for teen girl outfits feature a 72-year-old man.