Troubleseeker

So you want to be a fashion photographer?

If you don’t want to join the amateurs¹ at The Shot and receive the grand prize to shoot a campaign for Victoria’s Secret in return for being humiliated in public television then you need to get up there the hard way.

Melissa

make-up: Sommer Mbonu, hair: Allison Murphy, model: Melissa for Angies

Becoming a fashion photographer may seem a daunting challenge. You will be spending more time preparing shoots and post-processing your images than actual shooting. You need to have an interest in fashion. Expect to spend money and time as opposed to getting paid – if you’re in for the money: go become a wedding photographer! Seriously! There are a few fashion photographers who make a killing and earn tens of thousands of dollars per day but on average a bad wedding photographer makes more money than a good fashion photographer.

It is not enough if you snap 5000 pictures and eventually end up with one brilliant shot. You need to be able to recreate and you need to be able to do so on command. Not only that: you also need to always be able to adjust to suddenly changing environments, improvise a lot and think “out of the box”.

Jenna

make-up: Sommer Mbonu, hair: Allison Murphy, model: Jenna for Angies

I took the above 6 pictures in one session. 3 looks each. Every make-up demanded a different light setup and a different mood that wanted to be created. Because I had no idea what make-up and hair would look like until they got started, all the lighting had to be ad-hoc leaving little room for wrong decisions.

Even though my example shows Beauty photography pictures instead of Fashion photography pictures, I found it good to make this one point clear: you will need to deliver. Beauty photography is no fashion photography per se but every fashion photographer will want to master the skills required for beauty photography and most photographers in this field are required to offer both.

You are not alone

Unless you like taking self-portraits you will never work alone. The bare minimum is a model. If you are just starting out and don’t have friends who like being in front of a camera you may have to pay someone to model for you. By the time you get more experienced and have some of your work exposed to the public you will see that finding models is rather easy. At one point it seems a good idea to approach a local agency and offer test shots (they will most likely give you their new faces to shoot first)

Two very crucial players in your team are the Make-up artist and the Hair stylist. I have come to learn that both are very essential for a successful shoot. Again, if you are inexperienced you may have to pay them for their work. As time goes by you will want to participate in so-called Creatives where everyone in the team works for free (or for prints) in order to enhance the portfolio.

A Wardrobe stylist is especially useful if you are shooting an editorial which requires many different outfits. An “Art director” (or “Creative director”) will usually supervise a shoot, focus on details, help with posing and give general guidelines so everyone is on the same page. Often he is the guy who picks location and the overall theme.

From assistants to someone whose mere responsibility are fingernails, you can encounter many more roles on a set.

Having all those and adding wardrobe and location leaves you with many variables (infinite possibilities – and we haven’t even touched posing yet) and it is up to you to conduct everything to the vision that you see in a style that you have acquired.

A starting point

Read books or search for “photoshoot” on youtube, learn how to retouch photographs, know your equipment inside out, and assist another photographer in your town. Most important: keep taking pictures and learn to trust yourself.

¹ In my opinion Dean is the only good photographer in that show.