In the past 2 years I’ve getting more and more into fashion photography. I’m involved in a couple photography and fashion online communities and subscribe to a few blogs and am generally trying to familiarize myself with the industry and scene. I go to meetups, look at other photographers work, assist different photographers when I can, but photography books and tear them apart, and book lots of lil creative shoots for practice and experience college football lines . Anyway, today over at Flickr in the Fashion Photographer’s Discussion Forum I came around this awesome post that I thought was so insightful that I wanted to copy it here to my blog.
“there are few exceptionals for sure. but my “personal” experience are here:
dont go to the expensive photography college,they are a ripoff for the posh kids. the most important thing i ve ever learned in college was the zone system, u can learn it in one week for under 20£. i spend hours and days in the darkroom. u can build a make shift darkroom for less than 300£. it cost me 6000£ in the end and delivering pizza with my lomo.
dont assist (specially those famous one)photographer or you will be shooting like him, only if u like to be copycat , or a short cut to the dosh, but believe me u will never be happy( maybe assist several diferent photographes, but then when are you going to do your own stuff??).
to learn how to light things up, just spend time dazing under the sun, you get a good idea about lighting for sure. the rest you will find a way to get it. i build a £50 kino flood or get a flood 500w tungsten light from a construction site, legally.
dont buy any fancy equipments, my £10 seagull twin lens works great with landscape. digital camera and computer are terrible inventions if you dont have the discipline to use it. shoot film first, black and white film and make some mistakes. absolutely no retouching, buy a computer later when u have a client.
have a very very good relationship with as many model agencies as you can…..be nice to your crews and let them create something for you as well. you should have a good feeling in the beginning who you are working with. feed them even just an apple and a banana. charismatic personality get you very far.
dont copy trends or up and coming stuffs or u will always be the one catching up with everybody else. find inspiration in some unlikely resources. if i dont have to, i prefer not to use models, instead my fav. are dancers, actors…..but some great models just had it all…
dont give a damn on what everybody said, photorgaphy comes first, fashion second then the model to fit in the shot, NOT vice verse, maybe equally important sometime but not more important than photography******(only if you want to create a picture with an unique signature of yourself and create a niche of fans and clients, then follow this path)
these are everything i did for the last 8years, and i realized its a long(*)road( not so hard and painful if you are passionate about photography and have some nice pictures sometime) .
make sure you have enough to pay your rent and food, or get your frineds and families to pay for it …. just for a while and dont piss them off, they are a life saver…
and keep on shooting and no retirement plans. ”
Original post by takkytak
Photo by Megan Cole