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Fashion Layout


jkantor

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I took some of the shots I did a couple of weeks ago and came up with

some sample page spreads for the fashion layout. This is for a

quarter size (4.25 x 5.5) free, locally distributed advertising

magazine (about 68 pages). (One of the great things about working

with a startup is that you get to do a lot of it yourself.)<div>0050MA-12488684.jpg.88c25d67b4bdd749da66a98411af1d0a.jpg</div>

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Looks good I guess but its hard to tell without the text, etc. The images look good just make sure they aren't too dark for publication. Especially for full page that is alot of black ink. Check with the printers for their take on it.

 

Harvey, you ought to keep up to date with recent fashion photography. It seems like you have never seen issues of Maxim or even recent stuff in Vogue or Harper's. Things are different than they were in the 60's....

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>>Things are different than they were in the 60's<<

 

Not really. I used to have very little trouble getting girls to take their clothes off. But we called it 'glamour photography' then, or soft porn if we were being honest.

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The main products in this shoot are Moet (the nightclub) and the Besame lingerie. Secondary are the necklaces. The text will include info on Moet and the local Besame rep (the Hispanic model), as well as identify the featured products. (By the way, the torso is the actual center spread of the magazine. I chose the others because they will be split across page boundaries.)

 

Because of the size of the mag, a key goal is to get readers to visit the accompanying website which will have many more pictures (plus video) and much more information. (And no popup ads. Everything is product placement.)

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Here's my take on this:<p>

1. For Moet (a nightclub/gentlement club I assume) too much lingerie too little skin, plus I don't see the relation between fashion and nightclub,<p>

2. For the necklaces, too much skin, too little jewelry.<p>

Personally, I find these covers accomplish little why trying to cover too many things. This of course has nothing to do w/ how lovely these ladies are or how you beautifully captured their images. It's strictly in the sense of achieving your objectives. Regards, M.

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Well, for me, the lingerie is well covered by these shots. However, the photos give no indication at all that there is anything at all having to do with a nightclub of any sort, gentlemen's or otherwise. So, in viewing these photos my take would be that the primary focus is the lingerie, while the jewelry is a very low secondary and I have no idea what kind of room they are in, a living room, bedroom, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't think a nightclub though.

 

I hope that helps. Take care.

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>>Well, for me, the lingerie is well covered by these shots<<

 

'well covered' is not a term I'd use in this context. When I was an assistant we did a fair amount of underwear shots and there were some simple rules.

 

Rule 1: show the texture of the material. Most women's main interest is in how comfortable the thing will be.

 

Rule 2: Don't show the model's face. The idea is to persuade the reader that she wants to buy the thing for herself.

 

Rule 3: Don't make the product look tarty. Very few women want to be thought of as sluts, which is why Marks & Spencer sell an awfull lot of plain white underwear for women.

 

I'd submit that these photos break every one of these rules and are soft porn pure and simple. Personally, I have no problem with that, it's every red-blooded young photographer's mission to try and get as many young women out of their clothes as he can. My objection is simply to hypocrisy: calling this a 'fashion layout' is a flagrant breach of the Trades Description Act.

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Fashion photography is advertising and like all advertising exists to do one thing: link a brand name with a perception. (Note that the product is secondary and sometimes completely irrelevent.)

 

If you are taking pictures of clothes you are doing catalog photography. Besame already has a very nice website for that.

 

The same goes for locations. (In this case the club). If you've ever seen a Sports Illustrated calendar, you'll realize that almost every shot could just have easily been done at a motel on a New Jersey beach. However, by traveling to an exotic locale, it makes the end product more exotic (as does having famous models).

 

In this shoot, the two concepts work together. Shooting a fashion layout at a nightclub both helps create the perception that the club is unique as well as adding interest to the fashion photography (since it becomes somewhat transgressive).

 

And Moet is an upscale Hip-Hop club, by the way, hence the models selected.

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John, with all due respect, at least a few of the people commenting have some idea about the role of photography in advertising, and we aren't necessarily seeing what you say is there. If you have to explain to us how the image does work (despite our own views), do you really expect the average reader of the magazine to get it?

 

You should post these on the Fashion Only Forum--I'd be interested in the responses from people whose fashion views are similar to yours.

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John, John, you're in a hole, quit digging.

 

There's nothing wrong with the photos as soft porn. The girls look young, attractive and available. To say this is advertising the clothes, though, is just plain silly. You can't see the clothes, they're just black shapes with no detail or texture. You're not advertising the location 'cause it's hidden in the shadows. All you're left with is the girls.

 

If what you're saying is, 'come to our website and see more like this' then, fair enough, you're advertising the web site. I'll believe you. Won't stop me having a snigger, though.

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Actually you can see detail in the clothes in the hi-res scans - but that's pretty much irrelevent.

 

Advertising is advertising - not product photography. (Just like a portrait isn't a passport photo.) Try looking at a fashion magazine some time. You'll see a spectrum from fashion to catalog (as well as from bad to good), but the strongest images are never about the product per se, but about perception. If you can't recognize that you're missing the entire point. (Does anyone remember the original Infinity campaign?)

 

Where contemporary advertising is behind the times is in creating synergy between multiple media streams at the same time (print, web, still, video, etc.). You have to have all the elements available to the customer - product information as well as advertising (that's where the Infinity campaign fell short) - and now the ability to purchase instantly.

 

But most working photographers never get to choose anyway; that's the purview of the marketing and art directors. Luckily, in this case, those are me too.

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<i>Try looking at a fashion magazine some time. You'll see a spectrum from fashion to catalog (as well as from bad to good), but the strongest images are never about the product per se, but about perception. If you can't recognize that you're missing the entire point.</I><P>

While I lay no claim to being a fashion photographer, I do look at fashion magazines on occasion. You don't get to dismiss my views on those grounds. I think <i>you</i> are missing a vital point about perception: To the viewers, it doesn't matter what the photographer (or editor or AD) says the story means, it only matters what the viewers perceive.<p>

Again, I suggest you post these on FoF to get the responses of others whose concept of fashion photography is similar to yours.

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Actually, our terminology is getting sloppy here. The difference we are talking about is marketing versus sales. There is "fashion" photography involved in both.

 

But to detail some basic principles, as I said before, the purpose of marketing is to link a perception to a brand in the consumer's mind. The purpose of sales is to link benefits to a product or service in that same consumer's mind. In many (but certainly not all) cases, promotional materials do both to some extent.

 

And one thing we haven't mentioned about this layout here is that it's market is split exactly 50/50 between males and females (21 to 35 and who go out at least weekly). Just like Victoria's Secret's "catalogs" are designed to appeal to men (and also combine marketing and sales approaches), this layout is supposed to mimic the softcore men's magazines. Therefore at one level it is "content." However, it also works as a marketing piece by centering on specific brands (the lingerie, the club, the jewelry). But it is not a sales piece and it's not supposed to be.

 

The one key principle that I'm espousing for all the "content" in this publication is that it combine content with marketing/sales promotion - doing away with the distinction completely. In the future everything will be product placement.

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Maybe I need to take some pills but it strikes me that you're writing a load of old bullocks. This is nothing to do with selling the clothes or the jewellery or the location and everything to do with showing a bunch of girls with no clothes on for someone's sexual gratification.

 

Perhaps that's not what you had in mind when you took the photos - fine, you cocked up the shoot. Perhaps you really meant to produce some soft porn - equally fine, you're just being hypocritical now.

 

Spouting a load of rubbish about product placement isn't going to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear.

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Well, you may or may not like the photography, or you might disagree with the effectiveness of the entire layout, but it really sounds like you don't understand either sales or marketing - and that's what commercial photography is all about.
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Now we're down to the sad truth. Anyone who disagrees with you doesn't understand...

 

I'm afraid your problem is that other people do understand. Hey, I've said that they're good pictures of their kind. Publish the girls' phone numbers and I'm sure they'll get lots of business.

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I've been nice, but only one of us can be right - and I wouldn't bet on you. You disagree with my comments on sales and marketing? How?

 

If you look at fashion magazines then you obviously aren't seeing what's actually on the page in front of you. Fashion photography isn't about clothes _or_ pretty girls (or even pretty pictures), it's a form of advertising and as such it's about making money for the companies that pay for the ads and support the feature layouts. Take a look at any fashion mag (or any mag for that matter) and start paying attention to which ads are product-centric and which are image-centric (and which fall into the grey area in the middle and are usually much less successful because of it).

 

Of course, there's a huge demand for product photographers and you can make a terrific living doing it - but I didn't take up photography to shoot JC Penney catalogs (or for that matter, the majority of the crap that fills out the pages of most fashion mags).

 

But for the vast majority of photographers, all of this is irrelevent anyway: they shoot what they are paid to shoot and are told how to shoot it. If you have an argument take it up with marketing and art directors. They are the ones who decide what goes in an ad and how it looks.

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Actually, I think both of you can be right. I understand what John is saying, that his objective is to create the mood/ambience/perception of a upscale nightclub, with the shadows and swagger imparting a certain feel that he wants to come across as being associated with his "product". Sort of along the lines of Crate and Barrel ads, where its less about a specific product, but about an image of a world it wants to present.

 

Abercrombie does the same with alot of its ads, since it seems to want to project an Ivy League motif, even if the models are half clothed, or the clothes aren't front and center as the subject.

 

I also can see the other viewpoints. I think Mike has a point in that what you are aiming to do might not necessarily be what your photos are achieving. The other significant point that I recall was that your products aren't getting the limelight. In view of your stated objectives, I see this as just being a point of difference between yourself and other's POV regarding product placement photography vs product photography.

 

But, echoing Mike again, I think in terms of product placement, your layout may not be presenting your perspective in the best manner. I think if you want to create more of the ambience of the club, of hip hop, etc...I would suggest less zoomed in images, and more ones inclusive of the environment. Not to make the environment the keynote, but at least include enough of it to give a taste. Also, the last image with the lady getting makeup done seems a bit stilted. The others appear more inline with your objective, but may benefit from a more critical eye.

 

In ads for some of the Las Vegas nightclubs (Studio 54, etc.), I think they included more crowd shots intermixed with a pseudo lounge setting with people interacting in a way that both set the mood and perceptions for the viewer in terms of the "fun" they might expect, as well as give a sense of the club itself. The photos projected upscale by virtue of the clothing and attire, and expressions on the model's faces.

 

My impression (and this is only my opinion) is that the photos by and large imply a gentleman's club scene due in part to clothing choice, but more importantly by the models' expressions. First layout has one lady with legs apart and coy look on her face. I can see why some attribute this look to "soft porn". I know that's not what you intended, but if some viewers are reading that as such, you might consider that a bit.

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