“When it comes to art, it’s important not to hide the madness.” – Atticus

Is fashion photography still fashion photography without a model? Or does it default to product photography?

When I was first starting out in photography, I was far to nervous to approach an agency to ask if I could test with their new faces, I was even too fearful to approach models on Facebook groups looking to do TFP (trade for photos) shoots. In all honesty I thought I was going to make such a mess of my first photo-shoot with a model that I didn’t want anyone to see it or even know it existed!

So I came up with what I thought was an ingenious plan at the time and grabbed a couple of magazines featuring full page model shots,

I then placed some of my own jewellery on top of the images and voila,

my very own fashion photo-shoot (of sorts) without a real life model. It was great fun, a bit of practice, and finally I plucked up the courage to approach a couple of TFP models.

These days I have established relationships with some of the local modelling agencies and test with their new and established faces; but looking back I will still remember this as one of my first forays into working with models.

Searching on Pinterest I came across some other inspiring ideas for shooting fashion without a model, I’ll be saving them in my “client doesn’t have the budget for a model” folder. Here are a few of the ideas I came across:

Would you classify these as fashion photography? Product photography? Or perhaps a bridge between the genres.