A Guide to Photographing and Creatively Directing a Fashion Lookbook

1. Introduction: As a fashion photographer, one of the most common things that you'll be asked to shoot is a fashion lookbook which involves a series of images designed to promote the clothing of a brand or a clothing line. In today's class, we're going to be looking at a real-life example of a photoshoot that I produced and photographed for a well-known sports retailer. I'll be providing you with a guide to apply to your own shoots, walking you through the pre-production process, from trying to understand your brain to choosing your models and locations. Then we'll be moving into the production process, the actual photoshoot itself where we'll be exploring the best practices when it comes to the actual shoot. My name is Sophia Carey and I am a portrait and fashion photographer based in the UK. In the past, I have worked with clients from Nike, Adidas, Reebok, and many more. Shooting fashion lookbooks for different brands across genres is a key part of what I do and what I have been doing for the last few years. If you are looking for how-to when it comes to fashion lookbooks, when it comes to organizing, producing, photographing a fashion lookbook for a fashion brand. Then this course is for you, whether you are a photographer yourself looking to shoot lookbooks, or maybe you're a creative director or producer looking to organize one. This class should also be useful if you are a clothing brand, owner or director yourself and you're looking to start commissioning photoshoots for your brand. Without saying much more, let's get started. 2. Class Project: Thank you so much for joining today's class and for continuing with us in this series of lessons. During this class, there will be a class project that I want you to keep in mind as we're moving through the lessons. At the end of the class, I'm going to be asking you to submit a series of images to the project gallery that showcase a specific piece of clothing. Bonus points, if you are able to showcase more than one piece of clothing from the same line or brand. If that seems a little bit daunting right now, then don't worry, we're going to get stuck straight into this class, and I'm going to be talking to you about the best practices and the best tips when it comes to shooting fashion lookbooks. Join me in the next lesson as we explore what a fashion lookbook is. [MUSIC] 3. What is a Fashion Lookbook?: What is a fashion lookbook? I'd imagine that you probably have some understanding of what a lookbook is. Maybe you've been asked to shoot a lookbook and you just want a little bit of reassurance and how to do it, or maybe you're a brand and you know that you need to lookbook, but you're not sure really how to get started. A lookbook is there to promote the clothing of a brand or promote a specific clothing line or series of clothes. I differentiate here because there is a culture of bloggers who create lookbooks for brands, but they don't actually own the clothing. Traditional fashion culture would mean that the lookbook focuses on a specific clothing brand, but don't worry whether you're creating a lookbook for a brand or a blogger, this class will be useful for you. Essentially, a lookbook is there to demonstrate to potential buyers of clothes how they could wear the clothes, as well as showing off specific details like, patterns, graphics, textures that are important for buyers to see. Lookbooks can help to solidify a brand image and a brand's place within their niche. By presenting high-quality content, you can also help to elevate the perception of the brand. We all know the concept of not judging a book by its cover, but unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we live in a society that does judge books by their covers. We are a visual society that trust the brands based on their visual identity. Since a lookbook is such an instrumental part of that brand identity, it's really important to get that sorted from the go. Now, we have more of a solid understanding of what lookbook actually is, and that it's there to promote and sell the clothing. Let's move into the next lesson where we look at how to understand a brief. 4. Understanding Your Brief: Now that we understand what a lookbook is. It's important to get into the brief of a lookbook. When you are working with a client more often than not. They will provide you with a brief that tells you as a creative what they're looking for from the lookbook. If you're a client yourself as in you're a brand owner, a director then you will be giving a brief to the creative team. What are the important things to A, include in a brief and B, understand from a brief? Firstly when you're looking at the brief you want to understand who the brand is, what market are they in? Are they in sport or are they in fast fashion, for example. You're going to want to look at that market and try to look at existing imagery that surrounds that market. For example, if you know that it's a sport brand that specifically concentrates on basketball, collateral, and apparel. Then you're going to want to look at who are the leaders in that market, who else sells basketball apparel, what tone do their images have? You want to really understand that market because that will give you a good understanding of what the brand wants. You also want to understand if there are any things that are really important to the clients' ethos and their brands. This might be sustainability. That's a big one at the moment. Lots of brands want to be sustainable. It might be affordability. There's a lot of different ideas that brands want to put across within their brand image and their brand identity. If it's not included within your brief then you can go onto a brand's website or brands socials. See if you can find a little bit more information about them. Or of course you could just ask your contact are there any key sources mission statements that I should be aware of? Next, and quite tightly related to the market, the niche. It is important to understand who your target audiences is or who the brand's target audience is. Who are these clothes being sold to? Teenagers or men between the ages of 24 and 30, older women? It's really important to understand who you're selling to. That's also going to dictate the visual tone of your images. You want to be thinking about where this content is going. Is it going on socials, in which case, is it going on TikTok or Instagram or Twitter? You want to understand where it's going and what it will be used for and who might see that content. This is important because something that is going on a client's website versus something that's going on their Instagram will be shot differently. For example, for a website, you might want more horizontal images, space for text overlay, etc. Whereas on socials it might need to be easily cropped into a square or it might need to be vertical. Again, it's the same with if it's going on a big billboard or something like that, then you might want to think about the equipment that you're using and if your equipment can manage producing an image that will be able to blow up to you scale. To recap, you want to understand who the brand is, what they stand for, what market they're in, who they are targeting, and where this content will be going. I will give you an example of the brief that I will set throughout this project that I'm going to be talking to you throughout this class. The brand is world soccer shop which is a retailer that sells football, sells soccer, depending on where you're from, related clothing. The market is sport and if you want to really narrow that down even more, it's football. I'm from the UK so I say football. But if you're American or from other parts of the world then you probably will say soccer. The brand is American, hence World Soccer Shop. When I'm looking at other brands that dominate this niche. You're going to look at the front runners like Nike, Adidas, but also other harold brands that sell collections from all of these different brands, which is a little bit more like what World Soccer Shop do. In that case I'm going to be looking at things like classic football shirts and maybe even Soccer Bible who create editorials surrounding football. To the target audience. Of course football traditionally is a male-dominated sport. We are definitely going to be targeting men. But it is also important for it to appeal to women, especially as that market grows. In terms of where the content will appear, this content will be a digital lookbook that users will be able to flip through on web. They'll also be using the images within their web campaigns so headers, email marketing, and on socials. There might also be extra bits within your brief that you want to understand key messages and ideas that the client have that are specific to this project. For example with this project world soccer shop wanted it to be very UK-orientated. It's a shoot for the English Premier League displaying the kits with English Premier League. It needs to look English. They also wanted to collaborate with British artists within UK crime. Which is a really growing sector of the music industry in the UK at the moment. These were really important key facts for me to think about moving through the development and the pre-production of this shoot. The fact that it needs to look British and the fact that they want to incorporate UK grime. If you're brand owner it's really important that if you have the specific messages you want to convey,. That you communicate that within your brief to your creative team. If you're a member of the creative team and you've received the brief and there aren't any key messages. You can double-check with the client and show that there aren't any that they've just missed out of the brief. But most of the time people will put in the brief quite clearly if there are specific messages they want communicated. Understanding all of that information is going to help you in the next step where we're going to be building a visual mood board to help us dictate the tone of the shoot. Join me in the next lesson as we get started with mood board. 5. Building a Moodboard: Once you have a firm understanding of the brief, what you need to provide for the brand, it's time to build a mood board. So the way I think of a mood board is a visual way of communicating the brief. Everything that you've already understood from the brief should be illustrated in your mood board so that the rest of your team, and we're going to get onto that in a little bit. We're going to talk a bit more about building a team. But a mood board should be visual so that the rest of your team can understand the vision. They understand the vision that you have and what the brand want. You can draw inspiration from a number of different places, from Pinterest and photo books to the competitors and industry leaders that we identified when looking at the brief. I have another class on Skillshare that I'm going to link in the description that really gets into finding inspiration, developing your ideas from found imagery. Do check that out if you want. But the key takeaway is that you want to use this material as inspiration to create something new. You don't want to copy. So when researching competitors, your research should help you understand the conventions of your niche that you're working with but you shouldn't try to directly copy their ideas. When it comes to creating the actual mood board, you can do this in a number of ways. You might want to create a Pinterest board which is easily shareable, maybe a Instagram folder of saved imagery, you could create a physical mood board where you print things out and stick them down. Or maybe you just want to save a load of screenshots into an album on your phone. There's loads of ways of going about this. Find out which is best for you, which you find easiest. The way that you actually intend to create your mood board isn't that important, it's just important that you can put together a mood board that creates a concise vision of what you're looking for. Again, the purpose of a mood board is to solidify your vision. It's got to be really clear when you look at this mood board, this is what they're going for. This is the tone, these are the kind of ideas that we want to get out of this. If we look at the mood board that I created for the World Soccer shop shoot, you can see that all of this found imagery really communicates a Britishness, it's images drawn from popular grime of photographers such as Vicki Grout and also editorials from things like soccer Bible that really convey the Britishness, British locations that grungy urban look that the client is going for. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about how you actually build your team. This creative team, I keep talking about, how do we produce that? If you are a creative producer or director, then this one is really important for you because it's likely that either you or the brand director is going to be doing this team-building. For the World Soccer shop shoot, I was in charge of building the team. Often as a photographer, you might also be granted some of the similar roles as a producer or creative director. Let's move on to the next lesson and talk about building your team. 6. Building Your Team: When it comes to building your team, you need to think about who you actually need there. First things first, you're going to need models. You want to have models. You're going to need your photographer, maybe a videographer, maybe someone to do socials. Just like TikTok on reels content tends to be short-form video. Sometimes the videographer will do that. Sometimes you need a separate person. You can also consider having an assistant onset. This is really important if you're shooting on location because you'll be moving about a lot and you probably have a lot of equipment and a lot of clothing that you might need the extra hands to move it all about. A stylist is also really important. Later on in the class, we're going to get on to styling a little bit more. But having a stylist onset will help you to ensure that the clothes are looking their best. They're paired with clothes that work well and that they're presenting your brand properly. Then finally, a hair makeup artist. You might need someone for makeup or male grooming or something like that. Not all shoots need every single person that I've just listed, but it's up to your discretion as to who you feel is most important on that set. You want to think about the advantages of having each, as well as of course, the budget of the shoot and how many people you can afford on the shoot. I also recommend trusting the expertise of your team. If you are unsure about something, maybe having creatively produced a shoot before, maybe your brand owner who hasn't commissioned a shoot before and you're unsure as to whether or not you might need these extra hands, then confide in one of the other members of your team. Ask the photographer, for example, who might be more experienced than you are in terms of shooting passionate books as to whether or not they think this person is needed and can they recommend someone for the job? When it comes to finding models, there are a few different ways you can go about this. You can look to modeling and talent agencies. You can go on Instagram and try and scout on Instagram. You can even do some street scouting where you live for people literally in everyday life. Something I look for when I'm scouting models is if their overall vibe fits the mood board and the tone of the shoot. Styling is really important to me. If they dress in a way that fits the vibe of the brand, then I know that they'll probably be a good fit already. For this shoot in particular, my brief was quite specific in that we wanted to include grime and football. One of the things that I did was I looked for grime artists in the UK. In particular, grime artists that already has an interest in football, which really helped to narrow down the field of what I was looking at. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about choosing your locations for the shoot. 7. Choosing Your Locations: Just like when you're choosing your models, you want to really think about the mood board and the vibe of the shoe, and whether or not the locations are going to match that vibe and that's home. For me, that is the first thing that I think about when I think about location. In the shoot with World Soccer Shop, they said to me that they want it to be really British. I had to think about, "What are really British locations?" To me coming from South London, one of the things that I often get frustrated about is the way that London is portrayed as just parliament and Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, these key iconic features. When actually if you're from London, you know that London is so much more, it's the communities, it's the bits that aren't the tourist traps as such. When I was conveying Britishness within the shoot, that's what I wanted to tap into. I wanted to really look at what it actually means to be British. Where are the places that we go to? Where are the places we hung out? What are things that you can tell it's just British? I was thinking about things like housing areas, residential areas, housing estates, transport links like the tube, the buses, British pubs, English pubs, something that's quite iconic, I guess. Alongside that, I was thinking about markets. We have Sunday markets and things like that. These are all things that are very much a part of British culture. These are things I wanted to tap into when it came to location. But that is just the first thing to think about when it comes to locations. There are so many other things that you want to explore. Firstly, you want to consider the weather. You might not have an idea of what the weather is going to be like on the day of the shoot, because at this point you might not have even picked a day for the shoot. If this is the case, what I would recommend is thinking about, if it does rain, let's say it's the worst-case scenario, it's a storm or other places undercover, is this place going to get really muddy that we can't use it? These are the things you want to think about. You want to take the worst-case scenario and think, "If this was to happen, can we still use this location? Will it still work?" That's the same with the lighting. Again, you might not know what time of day it's going to be. Lighting is even more unpredictable than the weather, but it's a good idea to think about, "This location, there's no shade at all. If it's a really bright day, how are we going to tackle with the lighting?" Things like lighting aren't things that will really decide on your location, but they are things that you want to be considerate of when you're thinking about how you're going to use that location, so that you're not caught off guard on the day. Another thing you want to think about are colors. When it comes to colors, you probably have an idea of what clothing you're going to shoot. You want to make sure that the locations that you're choosing are going to work well with the colors of the clothing. I have a full class on Skillshare about color theory. If you want to check that out, I will link that one in the description as well. But color theory essentially explores how different colors work well with each other. That's something you're going to want to really consider when it comes to finding location. The next three things you want to consider a less to do with the aesthetics and the location, a more to do with the logistics. Firstly, you're going to want to think about health and safety. Is it safe for you to take everyone on to this set? There's no risk of injury, things like that. Of course, there's risk of injury ways, but you don't want to go to a specifically very dangerous place just in case things are particularly dangerous there and someone gets hurt. For example, you probably don't want to break into an unsafe structure or something. Not only for the actual health and safety, but that doesn't represent the brand very well, , it doesn't reflect on them in a great light. Next, you're going to want to think about permits. Is this public land or is it private land? Is it accessible or do you need a permit? Do you need to bring up your counsel and say, can we shoot in this space? Often, if it's a small production, you can get away with not using a permit, but it does depend on the location you're shooting in. I would double-check that. Lastly, you're going to want to think about having locations that aren't too far away from each other. If they are far away from each other, how are you going to get all of your talent, all of your team to that next location, and is their budget for taxes, etc, to do that? In the next lesson, we'll talk a little bit more about the logistics of timings, especially when it comes to location. Join me in the next lesson as we talk about designing your shoot schedule. [MUSIC] 8. Designing a Schedule: Now that you have your team selected and you have your locations sorted, it's time to design your schedule. This bit is when the shoot really starts to come together. This is when you're thinking about where do people need to be? What are we going to shoot here? Where are we going to shoot it? When I'm working out schedules I usually have three columns. I usually have the time, I then have who's going to be onset and the location. As a bonus column, you could also have the specific outfits you're going to shoot in that location. That helps to ensure that you're shooting the right outfits in the right location. Like I said before, where locations are is really important to the shoot logistics and schedule. You want to bunch nearby locations together. If you have three locations that are near each other, consider doing those consecutively so that you're not going back and forth. You can just move through those and then move on to the next area where the other locations are. When it comes to number of locations, I try to not shoot too much in the same occasion. I might shoot one shot in one location with one model and then find another little area within that location, another backdrop as per se within that location to shoot the other model in the other shot. That's how I did it with this World Soccer shoot. This just means you're not moving about too much, but there's still diversity and variety in the shots. You really don't want all of the clothing to be shot with the same backdrop. Another thing to think about when you're designing a schedule, and this one is really important, is you need to think about how much time you have with each model. It might be that you have an eight-hour shoot, but the models are only commissioned for five hours each. That is what happened to me with this World Soccer Shop shoot. I had to consider how I was going to best utilize the models times within the five hours that they were contracted to. I designed the schedule to mean that there was a two-hour overlap where all four models were onset. That was so that I had two hours to shoot any group photos that I wanted. Then the morning we had Ransom and Tia and they were on set together for three hours. Just those two. Then we had our two hours where all four models were on set and then Tia and Ransom went home and Denz and Renz were there for the final three hours. You can focus on solo and pair shots in the morning, that two hours in the middle, you're going to have as the group shot. Then in the afternoon you're going to focus again on different pairs and different solos. Another thing to remember when you're writing your schedule is to include a break. Include a lunch break, especially on a long shoot. It's important to keep everyone happy and especially on really long days. But hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea on how to structure your shoot or maybe the best practices to be able to do that. In the next lesson, we're going to be continuing with logistics. We're going to be talking about creating shot lists. 9. Shot Lists: So for me writing a shot list is so important. I would be so stressed if I never had a shot list. You want to make sure that you get all of the stuff that the client wants, all the content that the client needs. You don't want to miss anything. So having a shot list beforehand is really important to be able to take things off as you go. It will make you feel a lot more organized and on top of things, when it comes to the sheet. You can even run the shot list pass the client before the sheet to make sure that you've included everything or if there's anything that they want you to add to the shot list. Some clients will give you a shot list from the beginning, which is obviously a lot easier but in the cases where they don't give you a shot list, you can write your own. Again refer to the brief and just make sure you're hitting all of those key points of what the client wants. I usually have my shot list as a tick able list in my notes page on my iPhone. But you can do this in so many different ways, you can do it on your phone, you could have a traditional pen and paper and write it down and cross it or take it out as you go along. Brand owners, directors, work with your creative team to create this shot list. Tell them what you need and ask for that expertise. Do they think that this is feasible within this time frame? They'll be able to give you answers based on their experience as to what they think is feasible within that time frame. This is a much better way of working than demanding too much from them and them being overwhelmed by it. So now we've designed to our shot list, we've got our schedule, we've got a location, we've got our models. The final thing before we start shooting is to start thinking about styling. So join me in the next lesson as we discuss a little bit about styling. 10. Styling: I want to start off this lesson by recommending that you do hire a stylist for the shoot. Since you're working in fashion the styling is so important and having someone whose sole job is making sure that the clothes look right will be a massive weight off of your shoulders, off of the team's shoulders. That being said, here are some things to consider when it comes to styling, whether you have a stylist or not. If you're pairing items from clothing ranges with other items that aren't from the brand, I'd opt for neutral items in color. The main focus should be on the clothing that the brand is selling. Make sure that that clothing doesn't belong to a different brand, especially competing brands. You don't want to be promoting any other brand other than the brand that you're being paid to promote. If the models are bringing their own clothes, for example, shorts or trousers or things like that, and they have to be branded because they don't have anything else available, then you need to think about the way you're shooting this. Can you shoot in a way that crops out the brand logos? Does it make it obvious what brand this is? If not, is it possible that you can retouch those out of the photos impose. Of course, it's much easier to do it in camera. If you can do it in camera then do, because you don't want to be spending too much time photoshopping logos out of things. When it comes to a logo, the idea is that viewers see themselves in the clothes. They can envision how they would wear these clothes. Feel free to style the items, have the models wear them in unique ways, but also try to make it relatable to the audience. Also, if you are going to be styling them in lots of different ways, I would also include shots where they're just wearing them like quite straight on. Normally as such that you can see the whole product just for good measure. Another thing to remember is to make sure that logos, important graphics, and things like that are clearly visible. They're not bunched up, they're not screwed up so that you can't read them and warped and stuff like that. If you're focusing on a key graphic, then it needs to be clear. If you need to steam or iron the clothes before the shoot, then remember to do so. But also consider how you're going to pack all of that stuff and move it between locations. You want to minimize creasing, minimize damage, and really have a plan in mind as to how you're going to transport all those clothing items to make sure that they don't get damaged. Like I said before, some things can be retouched after shoot, but it is easier to get it right during taking the actual photos. Now we've run through all of this stuff that is really important to understand before we get into shooting. It's now time to go on to forward issue. Join me in the next lesson as we go through some of the tips that I have for shooting, fashion look books on location. 11. Tips for Shooting: You now understand the brief. You know what you're shooting, you know where you're shooting it and you know when you're shooting. It's now time to get started. Here are some of my top tips when it comes to shooting lookbooks on location and by location, I mean outdoors, in locations that aren't in a studio. Firstly, my tip for you guys is to split off one by one if you have a videographer or a social person on team. For example, with this shoot, I had an amazing team with me and I had Fuad, who was in charge of shooting the social content. So, short form videos for TikTok and Instagram, things like that. There was two of us, and like I said earlier, there was two models in the morning. The way that we operated here, was I took ransom off and took some still and during that time Fuad took tier and shots of videos stuff. Then halfway through the allocated time, we switched. Then we finished off by doing the parts where it was mostly focused on. It was mostly focused on capturing stills, but we did split that time again so that we got some video content. When it came to shooting the groups that two hours where we had all four models, we split that time in a way that men, I would shoot the stills at the beginning and then Fuad would shoot the video in the second half and then again, when it was just dens and rents in the afternoon, we did it so that Fuad took dens first for the video content and I took rents for the sales, and then swapped over halfway through. It makes sense to do both at once rather than having a whole hour where I'm shooting stills, whole hour where Fuad is shooting video and the models that we're not shooting are just hanging around. Try to really make sure that you are making the most out of the time that you have. My second tip is quite specific to photographers who are shooting both digital content and film as in, analog photography. Again, this does come down to your personal style and your confidence with both mediums but for me, I shoot digital first. The reason I do that is because it's quicker. It's easier to get you and your models warmed up and into the flow of shooting by starting off with shooting the digitals first and then pinpointing the bits that you want to shoot and film secondly. Thirdly goes back to when we're talking about building your schedule and have an idea of what clothing you're going to shoot in which location. This is a good idea to match colors. For example, if you know that you're going to be shooting in a location that has loads of red, then you have a red shirt, then maybe shoot that red shirt there if you're going for that monochromatic color scheme. Next up is probably the most important tip that I've spoken about so far, and that is to remember to shoot different angles. What I mean by that is shooting a wide shot so that you can see the entire front of a football shirt, shooting the back of the shirt to shoot the entire back of the shirt. Then shooting side side on and then making sure that you also get details, you get logos, you get textures of shirts. Make sure you get a whole picture of the clothing items that you are photographing. You'll see in this shoot that I generally did wide shots, mid shots, and then details. Then I asked the model to turn them out, wide shots, mid shots, details. That's a great way of remembering to tick off all the things that should be on your shortlist. Number 5 is quite closely related to that in that you want to make sure you are shooting a mixture, a variety of different aspect ratios. You want to shoot things in portrait, you want to shoot things in landscape, you want to make sure that it's going to be able to be used on web, on like web site banners, on Instagram stories. You want to make sure that you are shooting a variety of different aspect ratios so that the client has enough content to use it throughout their whole campaign. Number 6, is talking about variety. We're talking about making sure you have a good mixture of solo shots and group shots. A bigger tip that I have for you when it comes to shooting solos and groups, is to still focus on shooting solo items, solo people. This is because there might be an instance where the brand, let's take the world soccer shop as an example, have the Liverpool shirts on sale, but the Chelsea shirts, they're not on sale anymore. If I only have photos of my model's wearing both of those shirts in the same image, then there's no content for the brand to use when the Chelsea shirts are not on sale anymore. It's fine to get those groups, it's fine to get those doubles, it does produce a great amount of content to be able to use but you want to make sure that you also have the solos, the stuff that the brand can use when it's not maybe applicable to put out a set where people are wearing all different things. My last tip when it comes to shooting is to choose poses that flatter the clothing. Again, this comes back to what I was saying about styling. You don't want logos to be bunched up, you want the clothes to look good. The whole point is that you're sending these clothes to an audience. You want the audience to think that the clothes look good. Again, this comes back to having a stylist on your team to help you make sure that the clothes do always look good. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about shooting in studio and some of the things that you're going to need to consider and versus shooting on location. 12. Shooting in the Studio: When it comes to shooting fashion lookbooks the steps are often the same whether you're shooting on location or you're shooting in studio. But there are some things you want to consider if you are deciding to shoot the lookbook in the studio rather than on location. When shooting for websites and e-commerce platforms and you're looking for that really clean e-comm look where it's just showing off the clothing is not really lifestyle orientated. Consider marking a spot on the floor for you to stand and also a spot on the floor for the model to stand. This will ensure consistency especially when you are doing a traditional e-comm photos that show the front, the side, the back. Another thing to think about when you're shooting in studio is that it's a much more minimal location. Especially if you're shooting with a photocove or colorama backdrops and you're really taking use of that minimal vibe. This is something to consider if this matches the vibe and the tone of the brand that you're shooting for. You also need to consider lighting, a little bit more so then when you're shooting on location. Whereas you can rely a lot on the natural light on location, when working in a studio. Depending on the studio itself and your natural light can be restricted. You're going to need to have a better understanding of how to use artificial lights, such as strobe lighting or continuous lights. Whilst those are considerations, there are definite advantages to shooting your lookbooks in the studio. The first one that comes to mind is that you have a base for the day, but it's easier to steam or clothing, keep a eye and to organize items when you have one place that you're not moving from. It's also a great way to store additional items like lighting or extra cameras, film, etc. That you're not moving everything around in location, you just have a base for the day. Secondly, it's not weather dependent. When we were talking before about finding locations, I'm thinking about the weather. If you'd be able to shoot there in a thunderstorm for example. One of the most frustrating things about shooting on location is that the weather can affect the outcome of your shoot, whereas in a studio you don't have that to worry about. We're now at a point in this class where we have gone through the practical tips of planning and executing your photo shoot. In the next lesson, we're going to be looking through some of the photos that I took during the World Soccer shop shoots. Join me in the next lesson. We're going to be looking at the content that I shot for the World Soccer shop, English Premier League 2022 lookbook. 13. Photo Review: Throughout this class you have heard my best practices for organizing, producing, and shooting a fashion at book. It's now time to take a look at some of the photos that I took during the World Soccer Shop, English Premier League 2022, lookbook sheet. We're going to discuss some of the thought processes behind these shots, as well as looking at the actual lookbook that is on the client's website. First up here we have a photo of Denz, who is wearing the Arsenal shirts. The reason why I feel this photo in particular is successful is we have ideas of color theory here. We have the red in the shirt that matches the red in the location. We also have the Arsenal and the Adidas, Emirates logos displayed really clearly. The Adidas and the Emirates of the key sponsors here, and we could see those really clearly, as well as identifying who the shirt is for, and we can see some of those exact details. The three stripes for the Adidas on the shoulders. The next photo here we have is Ransom wearing the same shirt. This is a digital photo, whereas the other one is on film. You might be able to tell in the difference of a quality of image. Again, we've got that color matching between his red shirt and the red of the location, as well as clear logos. We're also looking at the fit of the shirt, the movement. He's pulling the shirt, you can envision as a viewer how you would be wearing the shirt and how the shirt would be fitting you. On charts like these also pay specific attention to the details of the shirts. This photo is a duo short, a pair shot of Ransom and Tia. You can see that they're both wearing different shirts. But you can also see that the colors do match. We've got the red and the red of the location. We've also got the blue and the blue of the location. You can see that it's a market setting. We've got that really like down-to-earth vibe. We've got some quite dynamic lighting, where we are backlighting the subject and we're causing that little bit of sidelight on the side of Ransom and the shirt, which is just really flattering for the clothing. You can also in this image see how the different shirts fit on different body types. Obviously, Ransom is a man, and Tia is a woman, and you can see how those could be styled depending on how you look or how you want to wear clothes. Join me in the next lesson where we're going to be looking at the content that I shot for the World Soccer Shop, English Premier League 2022 lookbook. Focusing on the sponsor detail on his arm. We're focusing on the texture of the shirt, and the patterns that the shirt provides. We've also got a view of the back of the shirt and how it falls. This image of [inaudible] wearing the Arsenal shirt. We can see that it's a landscape image with plenty of negative space. That is all of this space here on the Arsenal, the back of the shirt, on the wall, where that could be allowed for web graphics and overlays. If it was going to be a header or a different kind of image. Same goes with this image here, with all this extra space on the wall, it can be used as a header. This image is tapping into that Britishness. This is a London bus stop, is something that you'll see dotted throughout London. It's quite reminiscent of London. Again, focusing on the details here of the sponsors of the shirt, as well as the patterns. In this shot you can see that we do have some branded shoes, but they're Nike, and the shirt is sponsored by Nike. We've matched that up. That's why in some of the other images the images are cropped, like further up mid-shots, because the models are wearing Nike shoes, but maybe an Adidas top, and you don't want to cross-promote those brands. Again, in this location you have all the colors working really harmoniously together, with that pop of red on the wall and the red on the shirt. These photos have Denz and Renz together, this is an example of a shot that you wouldn't use when, for example, Chelsea is not on sale, but it does work for the editorial concepts, especially when the first lookbook is released. Again, we've looked at that really British vibe. We're outside a shop, like a grocers, that you'll find a lot in London. Next up let's take a look at the actual lookbook on the client's website. As soon as we come onto the website you can see here the banner straight away that is talking about the lookbook that we just shot. if I click on the lookbook it's going to open up the full lookbook that has been designed by the team over at World Soccer Shop, and they've done an amazing job. The first shot is a film photo that I took of Ransom. That line across the middle of the photo that's not actually edited on, that was a light leak from the photo. You can see that the client have really embraced that vintage retro vibe. Apologies if you can hear my laptop wearing away in the background, I'll try and minimize it. Imposed for her. That's what you get when you have a really old laptop. This image is used for the front of the lookbook, and it sets the tone for what's to come. You've got that graffiti in the background telling you that it's like an urban vibe. You can see the logo of Manchester United on the front of the shirt really clearly. So you know, okay, we're talking about the English Premier League teams here. This is the opening page. This is where group shots come into play. When they're presenting the concepts of English Premier League, you've got four teams here. You've got your Arsenal, you've got your Tottenham, you've got your Chelsea, and you've got your Liverpool. You've got all four models that are going to be presented throughout the book. Think of this as like an establishing shot. I'm guessing you guys like to watch TV or film. One of the conventions of film and TV is that you have this establishing shot that tells the viewer where you are, what you're looking at. This is essentially what you're doing with this first page. Here we can see that this entire page is dedicated to Arsenal. We're looking at the different ways in which Ransom is wearing the Arsenal shirt. We've got different angles displaying different elements, and the way that the shirt falls onto Ransom. Next up we've got Denz and Renz. Here you've got a similar page to the Arsenal page, with Tottenham. Again, we're having a look at how the shirt looks on two different models here, which is really great because not everyone is built the same, not everyone's got the same body type, so it's great to be able to see different models wearing different clothes to try and envision as a viewer how you might wear them. Next up you've got the United page. With the Man United page, you can see that again, you've got three different models here wearing the same shirt, how it falls on them, how it looks. You've also got a photo of some of the details. This next spread for Manchester City, again, demonstrating some of the details on how the shirt fits on all four models here. On this page with Chelsea, you can see again, it's a format that is continued throughout the whole lookbook. You have the details, you've got different models wearing the shirts, and you're just exploring the different ways that you can wear the shirts, the different features of the shirts, the different attributes, textures, graphics that the shirts have to offer. Now we flipped through the lookbook that I worked on most recently, you have a good idea of maybe how photos can be used in lookbooks, and what maybe the client is looking for when they are commissioning you to shoot content for lookbooks. Or if you're a client you have an idea of maybe how your end lookbook might look, and what you need to ask of from your creative team. Join me in the final lesson as we summarize the key points from today's class. 14. Summary: Congratulations if you have made it to this point in the class, it means you've gone through all of my top tips, my best practices when it comes to the pre-production and the production of a lookbook. Before you go off and shoot your very own lookbooks, I want to run through just some of the key takeaways in this class. First of all, remember, you need to take time to understand the brief. What does the client need? This will dictate your shortlist. Who is the client? What niche are they in? This is going to dictate this tone or the vibe of your shoot. Make sure that you can represent the brief to your whole team in a way that everyone is on the same page. When it comes to locations and tone and vibe, something to think about is the fact that you know the understanding the brief, and what you've got from the brief and what you've got from who the client is and what their niches is going to dictate a lot of your location, for example, if you're shooting for a brand that is a suit wear, men's suits, you probably not going to shoot that on a basketball court. However, a shoot for a basketball power brand, you might shoot on a basketball court, but you're not going to shoot it in a business area of high-rise and offices and stuff like that. Secondly, stay organized. Have a schedule that allows enough time to get all of the work done. You don't want to be caught short, over prepare there. If you think something is going to take half an hour, give yourself an hour. Have a shortlist. This is just going to make it so much easier for everyone on SAT to know what is needed and preparing your locations so you're not worried about, Oh my gosh, we need to find a location. We don't know where we are near. We don't want to be walking for half an hour. It's really important to plan those locations, so you have in mind why you're going to be going and choosing each clothing items. Then my bonus tip, which I haven't actually mentioned in the rest of this class, is when it comes to editing, ensure that you're not changing the colors in the clothing. You want it to be an accurate representation of what the buyer will receive, for example, if I buy a black top, I don't want it to turn up on it actually being navy. A simple tool that is going to ensure that you are accurately representing the colors is the before and after tool in light room. It allows you to view the original photo next to your edit and you can tweak it to make sure that the colors are exactly how you photographed it or how you saw it. If your camera is distorting the colors, something I like to do is grab my phone and also take a shot on my phone so you have the secondary evidence as to what the colors in the shirts or the clothing alike. Because that is all from me and I cannot wait for you guys to head out and shoot your lookbooks. Please do remember to post your photos in the project gallery afterwards, I'd love to take a look and give a little bit of feedback, is also really useful for other people taking this class to see examples of what you guys have created. If you have any questions at all, then please don't hesitate to let me know. But best of luck in shooting your first lookbook.