For anyone working in fashion photography, it is important to understand the most suitable and most effective style of photography. One point to note though is that before thinking about style, it is key to think about the genre of fashion you are working with because this will potentially narrow down your style choices.

Style 1: Catalogue

The term catalogue is linked to the concept of running through a catalogue to purchase clothing but it actually encompasses most commercial and e-commerce photography because it is all about being simple and clear.

In its simplest terms, this style is focused on selling a product by focusing on the product itself, without complicated props or elaborate backgrounds. For fashion photography, many will need to take plain shots to adhere to the requirements of e-commerce stores, such as Amazon, who require a plain white background.

Style 2: Lookbook

This style of fashion photography is about showing a range of clothing and designs and very often infuses the catalogue style with lifestyle shots to add depth. This option allows the photographer or e-commerce store to show their clothing in different scenarios, such as real-world locations.

The benefit of this approach is that it helps customers to imagine how that piece of clothing or outfit would look in everyday situations, going about their daily lives. This is incredibly powerful in drawing customers to your products and converting that traffic into sales.

Style 3: Editorial

The editorial style of fashion photography is often used to show off clothing and outfits in the guise of a story, frequently used in fashion magazines. There is a heavy emphasis on a theme in these photoshoots, often incorporating multiple brands, different items of clothing, backgrounds and props to tell a visual story.

Whilst this not only adds glamour and magic to a normal product image, it is also a vehicle for allowing a customers imagination to sell your products. They may well imagine themselves in those situations, wearing your clothing and be drawn to buying the items from your website or store.

Style 4: Beauty Editorial

For our fourth style, we have chosen beauty editorial, which in simple terms, focuses on the face or upper half of a model, because it tends to be about makeup, jewellery or hair. It is a far more detailed approach to fashion photography because of its closer proximity to the model and purpose of drawing the customer to very specific products.

For product photographers who offer services other than fashion, such as jewellery photography, this style is even more important to get right as it is a way of customers seeing far more detail on the products in question.

Style 5: Street

This is all about real-life, real people, in real situations out on the street – hence the name of the style. It is common in fashion photography today for photographers to approach members of the public and take pictures of them going about their daily life, or in particular poses. Likewise, it is a technique used to highlight celebrities wearing certain styles of clothing and outfits.

It is a fantastic style to use for selling products or brands because if customers can see people in the real world, wearing that clothing, they feel it is achievable and attainable and they can be part of that trend.