It Could Be A Campaign Photograph.

Texto en español, aqui

 “My relationships with producers or photographers, these are relationships that took years.”

— Alexander McQueen —

“What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”

— Karl Lagerfeld — 

Since I’m not like many people in the industry, always avidly looking for the latest news on designers and their collections, there are things that take me by surprise sometimes. My thing is more on the photographic side, and yet, I’m not in one of those times of relentless searching in order to get to know new photographers and their works.

In other words: since I keep myself uninformed, or better yet, I’ve been more focused on text than images lately, there are things that take me aback, for instance: the pictures taken at the very polemic Channel’s runway on a supermarket. I must confess that after seeing its first images on the World Wide Web, I thought they belonged to their latest advertising campaign and not their latest runway. That’s not all, though: I must also confess that I loved those shoots from that very moment. (I’ve loved them so much that even though the event took place weeks ago and is no longer news worth telling, I think reflecting on it is still valid).

After realizing what the pictures were about, my admiration stirred towards a new kind: it is one of the best settings in runaways that I have seen lately, and I don’t mean budget-wise, I mean, it is almost unlimited and it shows not only in the wonderful way the shelves were stocked, but mostly on how they worked out the room; it allowed photographers and cameramen to take shots that were so good that were, in more than one occasion actually, better than those we get to see in different campaigns for fashion brands.

I must clarify that I’m not saying that runway pictures should be used as campaign pictures, although after seeing the quality of some of them, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

The point here for me, is to reflect on the commitment some of the organizers of a runway have in terms of increasing the possibilities for photographers and cameramen of making good images. I think, without a doubt, a runway is an event for the press and the main buyers. However, and this is something not everybody understands, a runaway is not only for the benefit of public relations with the media moguls sitting on the first row; it is also of great importance for the communication that one hopes to achieve. The quality of the photographs taken will be accompanied by the opinions of the fashion editors attending the event. We talked about something similar in a different entry on the blog: the low quality in photographs taken from the first row during a runway. (Link)

I’m sure there are events that will be advertised no matter the quality of the material they are launching. However, not all events qualify to be the exception; and, in many ways, the players within such runaway production will be, without a doubt, hoping to be outstanding and use the media on their favor; and yet, they will need great quality photographs of their event so that it is indeed superior to the media.

One thing is certain; a unique event developed from its early stages in a space and with a production like Channel and other major fashion houses have done differs from event in which everything happens in the same runway, an example of those would be our own runways in Colombiamoda.

Bottom line, the reflection is the same and it’s not new to this blog: sometimes I believe, and I have some first hand information on it by being around such events occasionally, that the runway organizers work under the logic that every person on the press booth is obliged to take the pictures and editors are to publish them as if there weren’t any technical and aesthetic standards to uphold and offer. I usually tell my students on this matter that it’s not the same being chosen by the local media for whom an event is mandatory news as it is being part of the international press, which has the entire world with material available to cover.

To finish, I leave for you, images from another runway, this one from Alexander McQueen F/W 2014 in which the photographs could also be used as a campaign image. At least they are better built than other constructed for this end.

At the end, I don’t it is a coincidence: both brands have an evident culture and great knowledge of how a photographic image works. 

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