Fashion + Photography

Introduction: For this project, I wanted to explore the concept of fashion and photography as well as the techniques that go into editorial photography. My inspiration was Annie Lebowitz and Arthur Elgort, both editorial photographers. Elgort lends to focus more on the fashion side of this and Lebowitz works more on a storybook stylized end. I expired what it took in planning and execution of my won editorial shoots. This lead me to my driving question of: How can I represent the evolution of fashion through photography?I aim to create a multi-decade photo series showcasing many of my friends interested in fashion, wearing outfits that I plan to curate based on different aesthetics that occurred within eras. I plan to manifest this project through extensive Pinterest boards and planning and executing thorough coordinating backgrounds, outfits, and models to create cohesive aesthetic photos part of a series encapsulating multiple different aesthetics

Summary of Process: Going into the research phase I had had a loose idea of this shoot for months including multiple extensive Pinterest boards for many of the friends who influenced and participated in the photoshoots. This came very naturally to me because with most people I know once I meet them a few times I start creating some sort of prospective aesthetic or outfit I could see them in and it often surrounds a color palette I associate with them. I found that by using Pinterest I was able to turn my own ability to curate and expanding the aesthetics of my friends into something public and tangible. Because this way of processing came so easily I continued to spend months curating these boards for how I wanted my shoots to look. I think what took the most experimentation with that I had limited experience with prior was shooting with a built-in flash. Teo of my shoots were partially night shots intended to be shot with flash. I ran into glitches that I was never able to figure out the root problem of mid-shoot. This lead to lots of troubleshooting as well as researching on my camera how to get the flash working as I needed for my next shoot. For each shoot, there were distinct mistakes I regret making that in was able to learn valuable lessons from. In my first shoot, I lacked to ask and pay attention to the nail polish on my model and the hair tie that remained on her wrist a majority of the time we were shooting. I made sure to keep nail color in mind later on as well as politely ask those modeling to take off excess jewelry and such that didn’t match the photoshoot. When my second shoot rolled around about halfway through it got dark as I planned, but I forgot to bring something to diffuse the flash of my camera with. I was able to improvise by continuing to hold a horchata lid in front of my flash for the remainder of the shoot. I learned my lesson and bring tape, Ziploc bags, and other possible diffusers to my last shoot. Unfortunately, there was still one mistake that was preventable that I made. Although this didn’t have to do directly with the image taking I forgot to inform my friends modeling that I wanted them to wait to post any of the preview images I had sent them u till I completed final edits. This is because I had specific editing ideas and filtering I wanted to place on the images before them being presented publicly. My first shoot based on the 1930s leaned for a warm-toned washed-out vintage image look with a light vignette. My second 00’s streetwear shoot used a warm-toned filter with high saturation and a relatively strong vignette. For my last shoot based on 90’s Grunge, I lowered saturation added a defining warm-toned filter and added an accentuated vignette. The main consistency between my photos is the warm tone and vignette but one of the main goals I was trying to reach was a strong juxtaposition between the photos.

Reflection: I had a goal going into this project of executing three vintage fashion editorial shoots and despite the time it took and ability to opt for an easier project I can confidently say that I executed what I set out to do. I feel that I executed my driving question in the contrast of the different aesthetics both in terms of the fashion and the style of photography I tried to recreate.

I do believe that my images represent my deeper understanding of the Elements and Principles, Compositional Guidelines, and technical aspects of maneuvering your DSLR camera and all the settings because not only this a project idea I’ve had for nearly a year in some sense but it is a project that I never would have been able to execute a year ago. I also believe my extensive research and attention to detail going into the shoot demonstrates what I was executing with intention in my photos and I feel that my images demonstrate strong composition as they vary in a number of models and settings but also aren’t cluttered or bland. The most challenging part of this project was the research, although this phase along with all the others was very enjoyable I found it to be the most mentally and time-consuming. I hope to continue this project with more decade shoots in the future and continue to learn more about editorial photography. Of course, I made mistakes but that is simply what made each shoot after the next to go better and better. My photos aren’t perfect, but I was able to build a project from the ground up turning an idea into a series of images. I have been able to see the result of months of working to create a product I am thrilled to have to extend into my talking leaf.