Categorically speaking, nearly all commercial portraiture may be classified into one of three groups or genres of photography: fashion, beauty, and glamour. There are several specialized and alternate types of portrait style photography and situations where the categories blend and it becomes difficult to distinguish between them. The classifications will vary depending on the theme and source of interpretation. There are many versions and opinions but all things being equal the aforementioned represents the three main categories.
Fashion Photography:
High fashion is by far the most envied out of the group. The fashion industry generates hundreds of millions of dollars and into the billions of dollars a year and initiates a rippling effect that touches everything from furniture design to the interior color of your next car. If you don’t think they’re related think again. Fashion photography is the most prestigious and revered and is a style all its own with meticulousness shown to every detail. Fashion photography is geared specifically toward facilitating the sale of fashion related articles such as clothing, jewelry, handbags, shoes, hats, socks, belts, etc.
The goal of fashion photography is to display the article in a way that glorifies the articles into becoming an object of desire and eventual possession and as such the same meticulousness is given toward models with very specific looks, height, weight, tone, build, and dimension. Designer sample sizes seldom come in anything larger than 2 and rarely 4 for female clothing. Scouts for fashion photography and other modeling look most often for verticality to get the most length from the clothing. The more vertical real estate the better the clothing hangs, the more of it that can be seen, the more of it that flows. Themes of fashion photography vary from the most conservative traditional styles to the provocative and controversial. The photography of high fashion helps to set the tone as to how that brand or line of clothing is perceived. Consequently it becomes imperative that every hair is perfect to the extent of ethereal and borders on unreal; every thread hangs for the most visibility, and the logo is prominent on every picture of a handbag, and the logo on the sunglasses is highly visible as is the model wearing them.
The purpose is to sale the most prestigious and envied brands in the world. As such, high fashion design and photography generally sets the standard for what the rest of the industry emulates. The most prominent photographers, like the fashions they photograph, are often known all over the world and are sought after by magazines, fashion houses, and designers everywhere. It is a near impossible field to get into with any high degree of success. It is as much about perfecting your photographic craft and vision as it is weathering the socioeconomic and political forces that permeate the industry as a whole.
The best examples of fashion photography and high fashion might be found in Vogue magazine, Elle, or on websites of Dolce Gabbana, Versace, or Valentino. There is a different sense of manner in which models pose; a style of dress that differs in nearly every respect from other types of fashion; a freedom of expressiveness that breaks the boundaries and sets the trend for the entire industry.
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