The importance of the model for a successful campaign
In this chapter, we’re focussing on the team and its importance for your photoshoot. We can agree that we need a professional photographer (at least I hope you do) and this is why I’m just going to elaborate on the roles of professional models, make-up artists, hairstylists, and fashion stylists with the next three posts. This article is explaining what you need to know about models and why your campaign can be more successful when it’s photographed with a professional one who is signed at an agency. Read it
Directions of light – Why you shouldn’t always look on the bright side
By reading my last three tip articles you had the opportunity to gain basic knowledge about different kinds of light such as natural light, flashlights, and continuous light. By bringing reflectors and diffusers into play the possibilities of modifying light beams to be soft or hard, wide-angle or focused, direct or indirect are game-changing. However, there’s one thing left to be discussed: the effects of the light’s direction on the model and fashion. Read it
When to use continuous light for your campaign photography
It’s almost needless to say but for the sake of completeness: continuous light is designed for film making. For photography flashes offer the most efficient way of lighting a set – they save energy due to releasing light for just a short amount of time, yet they are powerful and furthermore do they come with plenty sorts of light shapers, which are mostly easy to build up and attach. However, continuous light has one very clear advantage: you can see the light of the setup even before the first photo or footage is taken and it’s, therefore, a good way for non-professionals to start understanding light – or at least to be confident of the light situation created. Read it
The power of using flashes for your campaign photos
In the absence of natural light, we are required to add artificial light to illuminate a scene, usually in the form of flashes. Clearly, this is mostly the case when we shoot indoors and don’t have enough daylight coming in through the windows or we don’t want to rely on it. Besides brightening the subject, flashes have another feature, which is the ability of “freezing” movement in a photo, because the period of time passing by during the lighting is very short. However, for super-fast movements special high-speed flashes AND cameras are required in order to capture the right moments with no blur. Flashes are either synchronised with the camera through a wire or radio, or they react to other flashes if they are in range. This is why e.g. a simple smartphone photo taken with a flash can at once trigger all studio flashes – so make sure to always take your making-of images without using the flash mode. Read it
The value of natural light for your campaign photos
Welcome to part three of my tips for better campaign shoots. After discussing a few fundamentals and the effects of different visual factors on your imagery in the first two parts of this guide, we go ahead with what you must know about light to be able to decide and communicate exactly what you want for your photos – first of all to the photographer that you work with. Why is this important? Because photography is basically just like a painting done by light. The direction, intensity, and kind of light used are determining how an image, and therefore your fashion will look like. Of course, you don’t actually need to know how flashlights function. But if you’re aware of how light can create the mood of your choice, you’re far ahead of many others and the outcome of your shoot will much more look like your previous vision of it. Agree? Great, so then let’s talk about the usage of daylight, flashlight, continuous light and their performance, handling, and the possibilities of shaping it within the next four articles. Today’s article is covering everything worth knowing about daylight and why you might want to use it for your images. Read it
The impact of props on your photo campaign
First of all, let’s clarify what really counts as props (short form of properties). According to the film dictionary of Uni Kiel, props are all objects on set including small items like e.g. telephones, food, plants as well as bigger ones like furniture, etc. Additionally, animals are called props too, even though they obviously require special treatment. Before we clarify if you need one or more of these props for your imagery, please take in what I claim to call classical props at fashion shoots. You can then decide, if these are an option for you or if you certainly won’t use them. Read it
How the right make-up & hairstyle make your photos authentic
By now, you might have a vague vision of your future photo campaign already, as you’ve learned how to apply styling in the last tip article and how indoor and outdoor locations appeal to enhance your message, etc. Another very important aspect is the application of the right make-up and hairstyle. This is able to render your photos to appeal the most efficiently authentic to your audience. In this article, we’re going to have a look at how important the right make-up and hairstyle are regarding four aspects: the actual concept, your customers’ lifestyle, current trends, and the model’s type. Read it
How the styling appeals
Which age is your target group? How bold is their style? Where and when do they wear your fashion? The answers to these questions may help you decide the extra fashion you need to add to your collection in a shoot, in case you don’t produce the overall look from head to toe. If you e.g. make shoes, you’ll definitely need pants, shirts, or dresses to combine on your model and vice versa. You may find the solution being cooperation with another label that with your help designs the perfect counterparts to your own collection. Yet, this might double your work prior to the shoot and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea – eventually, you’ve decided to produce e.g. just shirts for a reason. But that shouldn’t be a problem for your shoot after all. You’ll just need to have a proper styling that underlines your story without stealing your fashion’s show and we are going to analyse how to approach this in four steps. Regardless of whether one of your brand’s team is looking after the styling or an external stylist does, you should be able to decide, communicate, and possibly sample what you want through mood pictures. Defining the styling is one of the most important parts of the shooting concept. Read it
How hues appeal
Red stands for intense emotions, yellow for happiness, blue implies trust and calmness, green is the colour of nature and health, orange associates with warmth and positivity, while purple is the colour of luxury and mystery – and then there are the non-colours white, which stands for pureness, and black, which symbolises quality, power and death. The psychological impact of colours on human minds is powerful and evidently influencing our feelings towards things, which again influences our buying behaviour. It’s almost that simple, but of course, there is more to it, like e.g. the season and current colour trends. When you plan your next campaign and you want to have a photoshoot for it, it’s worth taking a closer look at what colours are going to be in the pictures, aside from the hues of your collection. It might allow you to have a distinct impact on your future sales numbers. Getting curious about colours now? Here are five factors whereby choosing the right background, styling, and make-up colours gets easier for you. Read it
How the model’s attitude appeals
On we go with part 4 of how your campaign images appeal to the viewer. This time we are having a closer look at the model’s attitude. If you want to find the perfect imagery for your target group – imagery that makes them desire your fashion – then you should be able to tell your model what she or he’s supposed to represent. The way the model moves and looks usually implies the sensation that she or he seems to have, thanks to the presented fashion, of course. So depending on whether you are selling hiking boots or tiaras, the model has different possibilities to set off the product in the best way. If you can give her or him the right instructions or at least point out what you like or don’t like regarding the poses, that’s even better. One of the most powerful tools in photos are the eyes of the model because humans are always FIRST catching sight of them in order to recognize faces – that’s due to our evolution as social beings. Read it
How perspectives appeal
Creating campaigns or other images to promote your fashion label means that you are speculating on which visual language your costumers understand and act on. In order to stay true to your brand’s philosophy and to be seen as authentic, it’s likely to incarnate all characteristics that you want to communicate with the help of the perfect model. But not only is her or his attitude crucial, but the way how the model is photographed can cause different effects too. When you watch a movie, the points of view create different feelings towards the shown person, object, or scene. Human imagination is a very strong tool to encode messages in pictures, which not only applies to moving-images. You just have to press the right buttons. Therefore this article explains the effects of different perspectives in order to give you an idea of your options and the involved power you have with them. To revisit the movie topic, when you’re aiming for a story-telling kind of photo series, perspectives and cuts should vary. But when it comes to a lookbook or online shop images, it’s more common to shoot all images very even. Of course, you can turn the tables and do it intentionally different, because this way your photos (or your website) might be more eye-catching. It’s up to you to decide if your brand should be quite offbeat or rather classic and the following paragraphs might help you find out which perspectives you like best for that purpose. Read it
How outdoor locations appeal
Does your fashion label need new photography in order to show the brand-new collection of yours? I’m happy to give you some tips on how to plan and realize it. You might have read my last article with lots of indoor location inspiration and how places appeal to the viewers’ eyes. Now it’s time for part no. 2 treating the possibilities of shooting outdoors. As I mentioned in my tip no. 4, there’s a list of questions you might want to ask yourself before deciding to situate your images under the open sky. If you have the right solutions to all those upcoming “problems” and you’re still eager to plan your production open-air you are welcome to soak all my following ideas in and eventually choose one of them for your very campaign. Me personally, I’m a great fan of any outdoor shooting theme, because a real existing place can look very authentic plus, when lucky with the weather, daylight can be very favorable for any kind of photography. One thing you should probably know is the fact that the midday sun is usually too strong for taking good-looking pictures. So in the best case, there are many shady spots to use for the time between 12 am and 3 pm. If there aren’t be prepared for your photographer suggesting some uncivilized hours to start the production, so he or she can benefit from the morning light. After a long lunch break, the afternoon sun will do the rest. To be able to make use of the noontime as well, there’s another possibility: you will need a diffuser to smoothen the light and either is it given through a cloudy sky, which is the best weather for shootings by the way, or the team uses a big canvas instead (but beware of the wind!) However, before I’m talking too technically, let’s go on to the location samples. Enjoy! Read it
How indoor locations appeal
You’re the commissioner and you want to get the best photo shooting results from your photographer? I’d say that it’s advantageous to know exactly what you want because there are so many possibilities. In order to define the appearance of your future pictures better, you should learn a little about the visual effects of different locations, perspectives, colors, dynamic or static poses, hair and make-up of the model, additional styling and props, so you can decide easier. Therefore, the following articles are going to treat these factors one by one and help you estimate more precisely what’s best for your next campaign or lookbook. Read it
Set the scene within the limits of your financial resources
You are planning to work with a photographer and commission your campaign photos, lookbook, or other photographic works? I’ve already been giving you some tips on how to find the right imagery regarding your target group (tip no. 1) and the planned media for publishing the photos (tip no. 2). I also gave you some technical details about different possibilities with different formats in my last tip. But to all these factors another one is prior: your budget. Read it
Think about the formats first
How to get the best shooting results from the photographer of your choice? Among other things, I’d say that it’s very important to bother about which picture sizes, alignments, and how much space you need around the model. In contrast to the contentwise way of looking at these decisions, as covered in my #Tip No. 2, in this article we’re going to analyse some more technical aspects. Read it
Decide before the shooting where you are going to use the photos
You are wondering how to tickle the best results out of your favorite photographer? You can indeed do a lot about it. My first tip was to find the right imagery for your target group – you can read the article here. So assuming that you already have a rough notion of what’s going to be in your pictures, besides your product, the next step should be to think of the last one: determine the ways of publishing your campaign. Where would you like to reach out with your advertisement? For the photographer, this is, on the one hand, good to know, so he or she can estimate the sizes and aspect ratios of the images you need. But we are going to give this the once-over in my next tip-article. On the other hand, knowing the medium can help you contrive your pictorial design better. You will find out why in the following. Read it
Try to find the right imagery for your target group
As I already said in the introduction of this column: it’s fundamental to know who your target group is in order to define the imagery of your brand. You’re the one who knows the product best, so you may decide which generation and which lifestyle your clothes are made for. Social media channels can help you find out more about current trends affecting your customers. You can see who they follow, e.g. influencers and bloggers, and what they’re interested in. The reason why this is so important to know is the model you are going to choose for your brand. She or he is supposed to represent your target group perfectly and therefore collecting as much information about your potential fans as possible makes it easier to picture your future model and find that particular face. Read it