As I said in the last post, initially I was planning to take street portrait on the road randomly. However, I had an opportunity to go for the Melbourne Fashion Festival in the past few weeks so I decided to change the concept into street fashion photography. When I first went to the show, I had no idea how could I approach to people and ask photos from them. It was really hard for me because I was kind of person who is afraid of talking to others. Therefore, I did not get much shots on the first day instead I took some testing shots and understood the lighting at the venue as I would be taking photos at the same spot.
““… Can I take your picture” is rarely a conversation starter. Getting creative is key. The subject also has to get interested in you – it works both ways. Humour helps a great deal. Being honest and upfront about who you are and why you’re doing this works most of the time.” This is the quote from Zun Lee who I was taking inspiration at first. He taught us to introduce yourself at first rather than asking photos. Therefore, in the next day, I summoned up all my courage to approach to random people and used the speaking skills from Zun Lee. Surprisingly, everyone I asked was so friendly and happy to be photographed. I was so grateful and felt satisfied of myself and the photograph.
In the selection process, firstly I have taken both close-up shots and full body shots as taking inspiration from Hongje Ahn’s fashion photography. However, in my opinion, I think full body shots are likely able to demonstrate the sense of fashion in terms of showing how the subjects dressing. Here are the comparison of close-up shot and full body shot that I took.
In the comparison, the close-up shot seems to be focusing more on the subject’s facial expression instead of looking into the sense of fashion because we are hardly to see how the subject was dressing exactly. On the other hand, when the viewers look at the full body shot, they will first understand how the subject was dressing in terms of knowing the fashion story behind.
Technically, I did not do much steps on post-production because the colour and the light are just perfect on the day. I only cropped the image and adjusted highlights and shadows in Lightroom. I also tried to make the photos into black & white however it did not work because we could’t see the colour on the subject’s dressing if it was black & white.
I have also learned some skills during the shooting. I was taking photos from 4pm to 7pm in the result the sunlight was in a way changing at each time. Hence, I had to make sure the camera was under the right setting or the photos may be too dark or overexposure.
Overall, it must be an amazing experience of shooting street fashion photography at the same time it was definitely a hard challenge for me. I was a person who felt shy to talk to strangers, therefore it was difficult for me to pluck up my courage to speak to others. However, as I tried, it was really fun and really enjoyable of communicating and sharing stories with each other. One thing I want to do in I have next chance, I would like the subjects to do different poses in the way of making the photograph be more interesting and amusing.
Here are the final selections:
Reference:
Seshu. (2013) An Interview With Documentary Photographer Zun Lee. Journal of Tiffinbox Inspiring Photograhers, [online] Available at: https://www.tiffinbox.org/an-interview-with-documentary-photographer-zun-lee/