Tip 18 for Better Shoots by Heidi Rondak

Why you should not shoot without professional hairstyling & make-up

Like I said in my last article a professional model is usually well-groomed and this limits the work in post-production to a necessary minimum. However, for your shoot, it’s, moreover, of great importance to have a hairstylist and make-up artist on board. While in the fashion metropolises these are two different jobs, in many smaller industries, one professional does both. Other than the title might suggest, the make-up artist is not only responsible for the facial make-up but also for the overall appearance of the model’s skin, finger- and toenails. In some productions, these tasks are divided too – be it because of the workload or the fact that someone’s a specialist in something required for the look, e.g. a nail artist. This also leads us to the fact that MUAs (make-up artists) can be allrounders but also have different styles and talents. Depending on your concept you might want to have a close look at their portfolios to find the right one for your production.
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The best shooting mishaps

Sometimes shit happens. We all know that and as long as you can laugh about the past, you clearly have learned something from the situation. That’s the essence of growing with your job. I’d love to share my best and/or funniest shooting breakdowns with you. As you might have already read in the other article (Why I name my editorials after songs or lyrics) I had some troubles when shooting editorial “Trouble”. If you haven’t read it yet, you are welcome to click on the link in brackets and read about that cold and rainy shooting night.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A Line is a Travelling Dot

Nude drawings and fashion photography equally address the human figure and its shapes that get formed solid by light. They are snapshots of short instants, a documentation of the current condition, that will pass soon. With fashion photography, it’s moreover the current zeitgeist to be captured by photo. Especially today drawings are located between art and design. Old printing techniques like etching or letterpress can be stylistic devices at the designer’s work, but in these digital ages they are not a necessary part anymore, so they may be classified as art. Still, we love handmade things. It’s individual, unique, precious, and made with love for detail. For the designer of handmade things, as for the photographer producing pictures in a photo lab, it means more creative freedom and a greater, but also more obvious effort. We all identify with hand creature better because we ourselves feel special and unique, as well as we feel transient.
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The Story Behind THE ESSENCE

Brands generate a completed feeling by a whole lot of well-defined details. Apart from the obvious, such as the visual identity or design, they use connotations triggered by colour, haptic, slogans, etc. Branding means boiling it down to the essential – not more and not less – which helps the costumer have faith and not getting confused. Brands refine constantly and operate after the principle of being both compelling and fascinating.
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