Fashion Photography - Week 6

Week 6: Fashion Photography - 3rd Post Questions

·         When is an image a Portrait? When is it a fashion photograph? Are the two the same?

The differences between a portrait and a fashion photograph can be quite easy to identify, the use of a model, lighting setup and a specific settings, of which both forms of photography use however they are far from being similar.

It is a portrait when you are purposefully aiming to bring expression out of the model. Concentrating on the person and not the objects it is wearing. A portrait can be a painting, drawing, photograph, or engraving of a person, especially when only taking a shot from the shoulders and above. This is mainly used to bring out an emotion or portray a certain persona of a figure.

Fashion photography focuses on current trends and creates a lifestyle through clothing. They are trying to sell a product to you, and convince you into buying it. Portraiture doesn't specifically sell anything through the photography but only makes you think about the true meaning of the photo. Fashion photography is a marketing technique. If fashion photography was to be defined: “Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items.” Over time, fashion photography has developed its own aesthetic in which the clothes and fashions are enhanced by the use of exotic locations and accessories.

·         To what degree should an image be manipulated to go into a fashion magazine?

Magazines come very close to being illegal when it comes to photo manipulation, the reason is because they change the way the person looks so much and that it misleads the audience, for example in some spot cream adverts they actually Photoshop the models face as the cream may not work 100% which is very misleading if they say it gets rid of 100% of the spots on your face. This is why they are very careful when manipulating their advert photographs, because it can cause a lot of controversy and anger from the public if found out to be lying and making up that their product actually works. The degree of what the photo should be manipulated is to the extent of changing the shape of the model however not tampering with the product.

This also causes a false sense of appearance, and makes teenagers especially think they HAVE to look like this to be “perfect” or “beautiful” however if it was to be analysed, the truth is that it can look very fake and gives a role model body that can be impossible to achieve.