Last assignment was about Street Fashion Photography. The brief was to simulate to have been commissioned by a publication to illustrate an article on Street Fashion. The theme of the article was that street fashion influences designers and the fashion industry generally and vice versa.
The magazine that could have published the picture was a young magazine such as ID, Dazed and Confused, Wallpaper, Tank or any other edgy magazine.
I went on a Saturday to Oxford street with my Nikon D800 and two lenses: 85mm and 17-35mm. I thought that the wide angle zoom lens could have been useful to get very close to subjects and create an unnatural look to the photo. And this was very true, but I soon realised that my problem was approaching people. So I went for the 85mm that allowed me to take candid shots without asking the subject to pose. It was a try and learn process. After trying different approaches, I found a beautiful background, a shop window full of silver foil balloons. I waited for the right subject to come but the street became packed with people and everyone was running after their own businesses.
I walked, followed interesting people and, at the end of the day, I had a few decent shots in my pocket.
I was not very happy with them but as the temperature was getting very cold, I came back home with a fever. I gave it another go a few days later, trying to stop people but nobody wanted to pose for me, how sad.
Here it is how I cropped and adjusted some of them.
I chose and submitted for the assignment the last one and added a white border.
After the review, Ian and Selina explained more about the 'golden rules' of street fashion photography. Some of them I learned from experience.
- Use long lenses if you want to stay far away from the subject. Wide angles to give an unreal but pleasing look.
- In Street Fashion, it is more important how people wear something than what they are wearing.
- Direct people. If they give us their consent to pose, we have to explain everything and direct them precisely, they will fill more comfortable.
- Try to eliminate everything that is not relevant from the background.
- NO SMILES. Street fashion is more about the subject being confident making the viewer want to be at their place.
- Backlighting is glamourous.
- The importance of context. It is ok to play with contrasts, but the idea has to be clearly exposed.
