Fashion Photography

Intro. to Fashion Photography;


1856 was the start of fashion photography. Adolphe braun published a book containing 288 photographs of a woman called Virgina Oldoini, she offcially became the first ever fashion model. Within the first decade of the 20th century fashion photographs started to be used in magazines one of the first being La Mode Practique, a french magazine. In 1909 Vouge magazine also started using fashion photographs in their magazine. Fashion photographs started orginally in black and white, but colour was soon introduced.

  

Application

there are many different genres of fashion photography.

• Black and White
• Erotic
• Fashion
• Glamour
• Nude etc.

From looking at fashion photographs you can use many different words to describe what the photo is like for example, Exotic, Surreal, Strong, Sexual, Elegant, Adventure, Retro, Fantasy etc.

Context

These images are used almost everywhere. In magazines, photo books, billboards, tv adverts, newspapers and the internet.

Techniques

Nearly all photographs used in the industry today are edited in some form. Photoshop is the most popular program for doing this. The editing of photos today is much more complex then just changing a few colours, and can literally edit an entire face and its features to different shades, sizes and colours, you can also edit a head onto a completely different body. The finished product can look like a totally different photo compared to the original. Examples of photo editing:



Notice how they have not only edited the colour, but they have also made her look thinner by cutting off parts of her stomach making her legs look smaller, made her face smaller and made her breasts look bigger.



 this type of photo editing, gives real people unrealistic goals. Lots of todays women aspire to look like most of the models that are portrayed in magazines etc, but with all this photo editing its not really possible. Photo editors are always very wary of the size of a model, and if they think there is somthing slightly wrong they will edit it out to create the perfect image. its not only the idea of someone looking different to how they actually are, the use of photo editing can also change the meaning or idea of a photo. 

In this example the man on the far right is edited out of the photo, giving the impression that he was never there. This then changes the meaning of the photo and what happened on that day according to the viewers of the picture. 

After Editing

Before Editing

Different types of camera can also effect the picture. The use of a digital camera allows a picture to be instantly taken but loses some of the effect of the photo. For example if you take a picture of a person looking sad, upset or annoyed it will seem fake or staged because the picture was captured so quickly that they really didnt have those feelings at all, which shows in a picture. With an older style camera that use films/slides you would have to wait a while maybe up to 20 minutes in one position to get the image captured. When sitting in hot lights and in one position not knowing when the camera will be ready you do tend to start feeling the emotions that need showing! This makes old style photographs seem very realistic and emotional.