Tuesday 19 November 2013

fashion photography

1. When is an image a Portrait? When is it a fashion photograph? Are the two the Same?

      A portrait and a fashion photograph are not the same thing. What’s the difference? An image is a portrait when the photographer is concentrating on someone’s face for example, you can get a self-portrait which is an image of your personal face where you have taken it yourself, whereas a portrait in general is a photo of anyone's face other than your own. This is different to a fashion photograph - a fashion photograph is where, even though they have put make-up on the persons face in order to make their facial area look idyllic, the image has to focus on the clothes and the fashion garments that the model is wearing as that is what they are trying to advertise, so if they concentrate on the face too much then that would become the centre on attention rather than the fashion being the main priority.

2. To what degree should an image be manipulated to go into a fashion magazine?

In the short clip, manipulations are made by giving the model a makeover - styling her hair and putting make-up on her face and then using a fan to make her hair flow back, following on to photo-shopping by adapting the size of her eyes and eyebrows, changing the length of her neck, also changing the shape of the area where her neck and shoulders join and also editing her cheekbones to make them more visible and on show. 
  
      I think there should be a line drawn to make it  clear as to how many manipulations/changes are acceptable to be made to a model in adverts and fashion magazines. My reason for this is because eventually people do pick up that the image that is being displayed in front of them is not the how they would look, and so that may change their opinion or they decision, as in if there is a product being advertised then they might decide not to by it as the image shows false results. When it comes to making changes to models,  it the line should be drawn after make-up and hair styling, my opinion is that also it looks good, photo-shopping should not be done on models as it is false advertisement and it is editing the real thing.

      An example of photo manipulating is;

    
http://techlifepost.com/wp-content/uploads/dove_evolution.png

      This image shows photo manipulations done for the dove advert - on the right is the 'before' stage and on the left is the 'after' stage, the stylists have done her hair and make-up and used a fan to make her hair flow. After doing that they have used photo-shop to enlarge her eyes, eyebrows and her lips, her cheek have been made thinner to make them more visible and her neck has been extended in an attempt to make her head look smaller also changing the shape of the area where her neck and collar bones meet so she looks less broad.


     My opinion is that too much photo manipulating has been done to this image trying to make it look ‘perfect’ when ‘perfect’ is an impossible reality. I think  

No comments:

Post a Comment