A brief history of fashion photography
You want to produce the hottest fashion photography that gets you noticed as a photographer as well as the brand you’re taking photos of. For that, it’s helpful to completely understand the industry. There are certain tips and tricks you can introduce to your photo campaigns, such as for example inserting props, using natural light, or specific make-up and hairstyles for an authentic and modern photo result. However, when it comes to understanding the industry, you need to delve into the history of fashion photography. In this article, we’re going to look at a brief history of fashion photography and how looking into the past can impact the future. Read it
Retrospective on Fashion Week Berlin July 2018
While the Football Worldcup was running, another regular event started in July: Fashion Week Berlin. Other than in winter time the weather was perfect to parade lots of dresses and enjoy a few evening shows and after-show parties. Here’s my retrospective on Berlin Fashion Week S/S 2019. Read it
Berlin Fashion Week A/W 2018/19
It’s that time of the year again: Fashion Weeks! And although I couldn’t go to Paris, or somewhere else, of course, I’ve visited some shows in Berlin, where I’m based, and I’ve had the honor to be the first photographer for Dawid Tomaszewski again this season. Read it
Heidi’s Christmas Calendar
I really love Christmas time, even more than the holidays. It’s a time when everything is illuminated, the first snow comes and you keep meeting your friends at Christmas markets. You start thinking about how you can make other people happy and you get plenty of chances to do so. There is the tradition of giving gifts which we do on Christmas eve in Germany. There is St. Nicolas’ Day on 6th December and there is the possibility of making someone a little present every day during the advent season – with an Advent calendar. I came up with the idea to do so with a photographic calendar in November 2016 already. Unfortunately for the Christmas season of that year, there wasn’t enough time left to make it happen. So I started the new year of 2017 with the early intent to make an Advent calendar for the next season. And so I started with the first shooting in March already. Read it
Yo, Because
It’s always complicated to plan shootings with famous people. The reason is that they are very busy and finding a date for the shooting is much harder. So when a designer friend and I planned to shoot an editorial with actor Jo Weil, it took a long time until we found the perfect date and location. But there were more reasons for the complicated planning process. Read it
(Per)mission to Shoot
I’m going to tell this in a short and funny way because somehow it really is funny. It’s a matter of permissions to shoot at certain locations. Usually, it’s a legal gray area or it depends on how you interpret stuff. E.g. there is a law called „Panoramarecht (§59 UrhG)“ in Germany. It says that you are allowed to take pictures of art and buildings when they are situated in public areas, because the artist (or architect), by displaying it that way, must be meaning to devote his work to the community. The ones who take pictures have a copyright on their images and may distribute them as they like, as long as they don’t infringe anyone else’s rights. Read it
The Importance of Beautiful Hands
As I already mentioned in my journal entry “Shooting at the Golf Course”, when I was surprised that a new face model did great hand posing, I want to explain better, why beautiful hands are so important and how they should look like. For fashion shootings usually, thin models are the subject and this has a reason: the clothes look better on them because they won’t be deformed. Also when you look at the armpit, the fabrics of the sleeve and torso really don’t touch each other when the model lifts her arm. This is very important for the retouching – you can liquify better and even out folds, etc., without changing the shape of the other side. Read it
Shooting at the Golf Course
Shooting at a golf course was the best! A little dream came true thanks to charming stylist Neesha Meusch who managed the permission at Golf Club München Riem, just as she had done before with the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski München for our shooting with Caro Daur. She has the sweetest voice and everyone is at her feet when she friendly asks for something. She was a great bonus for the shooting. Not only because of the amazing styling but also because the golf players weren’t very happy about us walking around and she was the one to calm them down a little bit. In fact, they were right: being there was quite dangerous. When a golf ball hits your head you can actually die from the consequences. Luckily we all survived, so we have a great series now with talented new face Verena from PARS Management which is now published at Solstice Magazine. Read it
Shooting with Caro Daur for FACES Magazine
Last winter I had the amazing idea to shoot with a blogger and generate some more range on my social media channels. I didn’t have someone particular in mind, except I knew which stylist I wanted to ask for the project. She immediately said yes and so we started contacting some influencer girls who seemed to look interesting for a fashion editorial. Luckily they all said no – so we had to look harder… Read it
How Summer 2018 Looks Like
To start with the best: I had the pleasure of shooting the new Dawid Tomaszewski collection exclusively for the label at the spring/summer 2018 fashion week in Berlin. It was the most lovely show – the models were slowly strolling on an elongated balcony, which offered a beautiful view over the city of Berlin. All buildings seemed to be white, as well as the handrails, except for the cathedral which created a romantic atmosphere. The clouds were dramatic in their shapes, but still white and peaceful and they created a great light. Read it
It just happened…
Here comes a rather funny shooting story. Back in March, I was shooting a great editorial (Dreams of a Samurai) with a new team. It was Konstantinos and Rocco doing the styling and make-up/hair and although I haven’t met Konstantinos before, I just had him on the phone, and Rocco I have seen only once before and it was already a while ago, we had a lot of fun and it felt right working together. Our model Emma was gorgeous: sweet and very talented, she blew my mind with her powerful poses so that after half of the outfits we had to slow her down to loosen the total image. It was unusual that we were all smokers (shame on us) and so we had many little occasions to talk in between and discuss either the next shooting steps or just chat about other things. And so the stylist told me in such a little pause that he had a brand new corsage from Dawid Tomaszewski, which has never been shown before and he planned to work it into the shooting. The corsage had the word “safe” stitched on it with sequins and beads and it looked very arty. Konstantinos wanted to combine it to a NIN3 earring saying “SEX” and so he wanted to hint at the importance of safer sex, especially for the LGBT community. He told me that the corsage was meant to be a homage and for the world aids day. The idea of implying a message into the editorial pleased me and I told him to do it if he’d like. Read it
Why I Name my Editorials after Song Names or Lyrics
To correct myself: Not every editorial of mine gets the name of a song or of some lyrics. But many of them do and I’ll explain to you, why. But first let me tell you about the editorials that I give independent names to. Sometimes while I shoot, I already have a certain feeling coming up, that a special word or sentence is the right description for. They just pop up in my head. That’s when I realise, that I’ve already found the perfect name for the series, without even having searched for one already. The perfect example is, when I worked with Celso Da Costa Hamelink for the first time and he had already organized everything for the shooting. Model Stephen Thompson should be shown in very classy styles, looking like a rich business boy on his way to work. It was very much “GQ style”, though the editorial got published on The fashionisto, which I think was perfect for it, too. Read it
Cinematic Homage to Romy Schneider
Fashion editorial ROMY exists in two different versions which are for both print and digital media. One version consists of photographs while the other one is made of animated GIFs. The latter adds up to an innovative storyboard taking the term moving image upon its actual meaning. The GIF version contains landscape formats only, according to the format of movie screens. In every image, a certain element moves constantly while the rest of it is frozen. The photographic version follows the same plot. Read it
Modern Bacchanalia aka. YOLO
Fashion photography is, on purpose or as a side effect, soever advertising. It shows a product that the customer is supposed to desire because he likes the impression of the picture. The AIDA principle is determinative of everything concerning advertisement: ATTENTION (somebody’s attention is engaged) – INTEREST (he or she is interested) – DESIRE (the customer desires the product) – ACTION (the customer buys it) The logical follow-up goal is winning costumers for future purchases too. Therefore brands create master plans for labels that are designed to elicit the sympathy of costumers. Read it
The Beauty in Typography
Typography is the supreme discipline in the field of design that concerns the direct communication of things to a viewer or reader. Contentual coherences are plotted by the use of letters forming words. They are perceived as many little pictures. The typeface subtly promotes the content of the text, though it keeps fading into the background. The typeset, grey levels, and white spaces define where to look first and last at a text design – stroke width, serifs, font style, and size emphasise the statement. Although typography shows a great diversity in classifications, it all together pursues the objective of conciseness. Read it
How I Became a Fashion Photographer
I grew up with my father taking pictures with an old Russian Zenith camera every time an event took place or the family went out for a walk. He was a semi-professional photographer who used to be booked for weddings back in his 20s when digital photography wasn’t established yet. Since I was always curious about the procedures in a photo lab, the first internship I chose at the age of 14 was in a photo studio. Unfortunately, the photographer didn’t develop her films on her own but used to send them to an external lab. Read it
Travelling in Time
Humans and machines can connect and interact through interactive media. It starts with a simple app right up to complex installations that seem futuristic to us. The development of such media has not yet grown up, but there is a high potential provided for the future’s design. Even though we are living in the age of rapid transition, those developments cause mixed feelings: sensations of freedom & restriction, interconnectedness & loneliness, the power of control & the ignorance of where this leads to are all there at the same time. Read it
About Art, Design & Fashion
The term communication design is a relatively young one. It is getting harder to isolate it compared with the earlier used term graphic design. Within the fast-paced information society, this professional field expands on more and more new media and demands innovative thinking and new skills from designers. Today’s designers are planners, conceptualisers, strategists and artists at the same time. – University of Mainz, study objectives Read it