Fashion Photography

A portrait image is a picture that focuses on the person in the photograph, its meant to be a life like photo which expresses an accurate interpretation of the person, however most of them now are edited, and the camera can lie, because the subject can pose, so as to not be captured 'naturally'.

A fashion photograph is a picture which is meant to focus on the clothes the model is wearing, however now-a-days the picture focuses more on the models physique. More-over most of the pictures for fashion magazines, are now edited a lot using Photoshop, However they don’t edit the clothes, just the models used.

Portraiture and fashion photography are similar because they both feature taking pictures of people, the main difference is being, Fashion photography is supposed to be focused on the clothes, and making this superhuman image whereas portraiture is meant to be a kind of insight into the person’s life, their facial expressions normally express what they are like. Portraiture is normally unscripted, whereas fashion photography is normally heavily scripted. Fashion photography is the most scripted of all the types of photography there is.

I think that it’s okay to edit fashion photographs to a degree, but i feel that it is wrong to edit the models figure. Most of the models have been edited to a degree that they appear almost inhuman, i feel that it is wrong for women to be looking up to a superficial role model. I think photo shopping pictures is morally wrong.

Cecil Beaton was a famous fashion and portraiture photographer from the 1940's to 1950's, He is known as the man who single handily invented the fashion fantasy. He made models appear dreamlike and the clothes they’re wearing appear even better. Most of the scenes he created and shot were very stylistic, he expressed more than just the clothes, he shown locations they would fit into and this has influenced fashion photography today.

Cecil Beaton's most famous fashion photograph was a fashion based photograph of a girl wearing a hat while shes 'poping out' of a box -

 

This photo was verry different to other types of fashion photographs at the time that it was taken, The picture was considered very innovative and inspired lots of famous fashion sets. The composition of the photo really helps the viewer focus on the model. The fact that the model is in a box makes it seem like shes a pressent and the fact that she is facing away from the camera almost makes her look like a manakin head, modeling the hat, maybe this is what Cecil was trying to achieve, by keeping the viewers eyes on the hat it would sell the product properly.

Grace Coddington was very inspired by Cecil Beaton's sets, which took fashion photography to a new level, focusing more on the 'set' than on the model. You can see the inspiration in Grace's sets -

 As you can see the sets in Grace's shoots are very heavyily scene based which help focus your eyes on the clothes and not the model, this is a very good way to sell clothes. Also the props Grace uses puts the clothes in a scene giving the viewer idea's of what they would look like wearing them in every day life.