Fashion Photography

Fashion photography has been around since the early days of photography. It is a genre that was and still is used to display fashion articles for both advertisements and magazines, the most popular being magazines like Vouge and Vanity Fair reaching huge audiences allowing both photographers and designers a platform to showcase their work.

Over time fashion photography has developed into its own brand of photography as most fashion photographers will now use things like accessories and background within the composition to add to the overall photo itself.

These photos are usually mainly portraits with little room for manoeuvre as they are there to showcase the clothes the model is wearing. This in turn requires of the camera to be of very high detail (both mega pixel and resolution) and will need to be able to maintain different areas of focus to help advertise the clothes (range of aperture and focus points) in the composition. Fashion photography is a form of advertising as more often than not, they are trying to create a composition in which the viewer finds the clothes appealing.

Personally fashion photography is something to pay attention to as more often than not the photos are simply complex while maintaining the essence of the designer and adding to it through his/hers use of composition.

A man that has greatly impacted fashion photography in the more recent years would have to be Terry Richardson. Known for his Marmite like personality and work alike, his career especially recently cannot be bashed. Terry grew up with a fashion photographer as a father so from a very early age he was subject to this art form rather explicitly.

After attending several schools in his adolescence he finally decided to pursue fashion photography. As said earlier some very much admire his work (I do) while others are not huge fans. This could be due to the lack of clothing that appears within his photography but no art should be limited in my opinion. He perceives people for who they are and by the what they are wearing he is able to convey not only the sitter but also the style of the garment by how the sitter is acting. Many of his photos contain the sitter as eccentric or hysterical but I see this purely to add to the effect of the clothing they are wearing. He is an artist, just not for everyone.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion_photography