Experienced photographers know that urban areas offer tremendous avenues for expressing their fashion photography ideas. In addition to offering more convenient and easily accessible locales for their shoots, taking advantage of urban landscapes often presents opportunities to display new fashion ideas against a backdrop of cultural relevance that really scores with the intended viewing audience.
Stark Contrast
One of the most intriguing fashion photography tips is to employ stark contrast in your selection of imagery. Models in bright summery dresses cavorting among the rusted-out ruins of some bombed-out brownfield site might serve as an example of what is under consideration. Contrasting bright-eyed youth against a backdrop of some venerable but forgotten landmark such as a park statue of some Civil War hero also offers a very interesting contrast that is sure to draw the eye of the viewer.
Exciting, Urban Venues
Conversely, urban fashion photography has been known to embrace metropolitan hipness in all its glory. In this case, rather than strive for divergence in the imagery, the photographer chooses sites that seem to epitomize the mystique of the fun-filled life of an urbanite. Everyone who is back home castrating bulls or working the night shift at the truck stop dreams of life in the big city. Selecting a backdrop of an exciting urban dance club or an exclusive restaurant marries the fashionable items on display to the more generalized ambiance of exciting metropolitan culture.
One Night Only
Taking advantage of urban specific experiences such as red carpet premieres and luxurious limo rides creates the idea that dressing in ways that mimic the models is the first step of identifying with and aiming towards an alluring life of cosmopolitan pleasure. Just as an old grungy concert T-shirt nevertheless proclaims the wearer’s identification with a chosen set of images, so too can the vicarious thrill of imaging oneself in the same urbanized place and time construct the psychological attachment that drives the fashion industry in general.
Lights, Camera, Reflections!
Among other fashion photography ideas is the need to take advantage of the multitude of different lighting environments offered in urbanized settings. Unlike rural settings, cities are filled with gloriously reflective surfaces such as glass buildings and sparkling fountains that offer tremendous possibilities for the photographic arts. The same goes for the multitude of shading possibilities, not to mention the dazzling play of lights that are only found in city centers at night.
Urban Fashion Photography – Exploring Dichotomy
Because photography is all about telling stories with mute images, the multitude of options available through cityscape backgrounds and light differentials offers the professional almost infinite possibilities. The main trick is really found in deciding upon the look you are after. Urban fashion photography can feed off of the many contrasts offered, such as a dichotomy between youth and age or of modernity versus obsolescence and decay.
It can also embrace the positive, alive aspects of urban areas and use their glamor to support and enhance the selected presentation. Light is always a photographer’s best friend and worst opponent. Couple the ability to adapt one’s work to the many available shades of ambiance. A shoot may be based upon the bygone toughness of the Film Noir look, or it can delight in the raw sexual energy of a city’s night scene. As with all photographic endeavors, however, opportunity creates as many brilliantly memorable shots as does careful planning.