Videos

Fstoppers previews its eleven-hour tutorial with Louisville photographer Clay Cook. Excerpts show him finding Rembrandt light by rotating a hand in sunlight, enlarging diffusion to cover a body, raising a studio head eight feet to sculpt a chin, and retoucher Jordan Hartley darkening sunglass lenses with a gradient mask.

Joseph Tran lists his kit for studio fashion shoots: any crop or full-frame camera, since strobe work at f/5.6 to f/13 needs no fast primes; a single strobe in a 72-inch silver parabolic umbrella with diffusion; and a laptop tethered via a high-visibility Tether Tools cable to Capture One.

Part two of dphog's fashion basics tackles personal style, contrasting hard-lit, rebellious youth-culture work in the vein of Juergen Teller with the presenter's story-and-emotion-led editorial look, deciding whether images are voyeuristic or make eye contact, and reflecting the zeitgeist, before condensed directing tips: cast well and give models characters.

Part one of dphog's fashion basics covers cameras, lenses and genre. Any raw-shooting body will do; a 35mm tells story, a 50mm flatters and an 85mm is classic, never using wide angles to escape small rooms. Commercial fashion tells viewers what to think, high fashion lets them think.

Karl Taylor dispels the glamour myth, outlining the ladder from low-budget editorial through catalogue and standard advertising to high-end campaigns handled by agencies like Art and Commerce. He compares UK model agency day rates, suggests negotiating tests with new faces or using friends, and urges respectful collaboration with models.

Lara Jade offers five tips: mine Pinterest and seasonal trends for mood boards in Photoshop, understand editorial work showcases ideas and markets a photographer to commercial clients, keep adding skills like continuous lighting and beauty, remember one lens and one light suffice, and treat marketing as a daily job.

Andrew of Beyond Photography previews a three-day Langkawi fashion shoot with creative director Shukri, explaining how a mood board becomes a technical shoot board marking light positions. He then shows online sellers how to model their stock and builds a huge soft light from mahjong paper on a C-stand.

Peter Coulson shoots model Abbey after three months to refresh both their folios, noting even top models keep testing. Largely unscripted, he coaxes her back into continual drift rather than e-commerce holds, swaps white dress for black, repositions the softbox for a wall gradient and tweaks a mono conversion.

Tatiana Kurnosova lists portfolio mistakes: a book should show the ability to sell products rather than the model, the first page should be a headshot or strong close-up, near-identical frames from one shoot or repeated poses should be kept apart, and too many swimsuit pictures suggest a one-trick model.

Bianca Koyabe explains how to start a modelling portfolio: find a test-shoot photographer, negotiating rates, keep first images natural with fresh skin, cover active, swimwear or lingerie and glam editorial looks, check how photographers retouch similar skin tones, then pick three headshots, mid shots and full-body images.