Styles / Fashion & commercial

Street-style fashion photography

2005–present. New York. Also called Street style or Street snap.

Where the lights stand

Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.

Open shadows: bright surroundings (walls, ground, sky) fill them; no reflector needed.

Schematic, not to scale: worked out from the style’s choices. No set-up of this style has been rendered yet.

Harajuku Fashion Street Snap (September 16, 2017), by Dick Thomas Johnson, 16 September 2017 — Harajuku Fashion Street Snap (September 16, 2017)

Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo, Japan, 'Harajuku Fashion Street Snap (September 16, 2017)', Flickr (31029865@N06/28849552067), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Source: Harajuku Fashion Street Snap (September 16, 2017) at Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

New York Fashion Week September 2016 (NYFW Street Style), by Peter T (Flickr user from Brooklyn, NY), 10 September 2016 — New York Fashion Week September 2016 (NYFW Street Style)

Peter T from Brooklyn, NY, USA, 'New York Fashion Week September 2016', 10 September 2016, Flickr (rr5706507/29514216591), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Source: New York Fashion Week September 2016 (NYFW Street Style) at Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

One dressed figure, seen head to toe, stands or walks towards the camera in the middle of a vertical frame; a 50 mm or short telephoto lens at a wide aperture softens the street behind, and open shade or overcast daylight keeps the clothes' colours true. The subject usually knows: asked to stop for a moment, or caught mid-stride outside a fashion show.

Shoot sheet for your kit The photographs

How the look is made

Pick real people for what they wear and how they wear it, on the pavement where you find them; never book models for the picture.
Show the whole outfit: one figure, head to toe, centred in a vertical frame, from the middle distance at eye level or a little below.
Separate the figure from the street with a 50 mm or a short telephoto, or with a long zoom at fashion-week distance, at a wide aperture, so the city behind turns soft and only the dressed figure stays sharp.
Either catch the subject walking towards you, mid-stride, with a fast shutter, or ask them to stop for a moment, step into open shade and stand as they like.
Keep the colours true to the fabric: correct and grade them lightly, but do not retouch; publish one picture at a time, with the place and the date, on a blog, a magazine site or a feed.

Shoot sheet for your kit

Fill in your camera, lenses and lights, and the sheet says which light plays each part, what to work around and where to start on your camera. Without a kit it starts on a full-frame camera.

Step 1

Light

Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.

Open shadows: bright surroundings (walls, ground, sky) fill them; no reflector needed.

Shadow edges: Shadows that fade gradually from light to dark, cast by a large or diffused light: a window, a softbox, a cloudy sky.
Shadow depth: Shadows kept light and full of detail by a reflector, a fill light, bounce or bright surroundings (a low lighting ratio, up to about 3:1: the shadow side at most a stop and a half darker).

How the style is lit

Open shade or overcast daylight on the pavement: the subject asked into a patch of even light or the shadow of a building, so the colours of the fabric read true.
Bright afternoon sun outside the shows, taken as it comes, with hard shadows on the pavement and sun on the hair.
A flash or a small continuous light for evening shows and after dark.

This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.

Step 2

Lens and settings

Start at

85 mmf/41/500 sISO 400

On a full-frame camera: the same depth of field and exposure as the style’s own numbers, in the same light. Then meter and adjust.

Then: 35–200 mm · f/1.8–f/8 · 1/1000–1/250 s · ISO 100–800 on full frame, documented. Specimen EXIF: 52–67 mm eq. and 50 mm at f/1.8–6.3, 1/250–1/500 s, ISO 100–500.
White balance: Auto or daylight white balance on raw files, corrected afterwards so whites and fabrics read true; open shade is neutralised rather than left blue (inferred).

Focal length: A long lens stacks distant planes close together. Roughly the eye’s own perspective; no visible distortion.
Focus: One plane sharp, the rest melting into blur and bokeh.
Angle: The camera at the height of a standing person or of the subject.
Distance: Whole figures and their immediate surroundings.
Balance: The subject in the middle, the frame balanced around it. The subject faces the lens; planes run parallel to the picture.
Instant: Movement stopped dead by a fast shutter or flash.

Step 3

Direct

One figure, head to toe and square-on to the camera: walking towards it mid-stride, a bag or phone in hand, or stopped on the pavement and standing as they like, weight on one leg, a hand in a pocket or on a bag strap or sunglasses. The face composed and unsmiling, eyes on the lens or just past it; friends stand or sit side by side.

Body position: Caught or posed in mid-step, one foot lifted, clothes swinging. Weight on one leg, the other knee relaxed, so hips tilt one way and shoulders the other and the body draws an S (the stance of classical statues).
Turn to the camera: Shoulders and hips face the lens straight on: direct, symmetrical, sometimes confrontational.
Head & gaze: Looking straight into the camera, so the subject meets the viewer’s eye. Eyes off the frame, past the camera or into the distance, as if lost in thought.
Arms & hands: Hands busy with a prop or a tool: flowers, a phone, a cup, a cigarette, an instrument, one’s own work.
Expression: Unsmiling, composed and blank: the face gives nothing away.
The moment: People photographed as they are, unaware or unconcerned.
With the sitter: The subject performs for the camera and shapes the picture.

Step 4

Style the set

The wearers' own outfits, put together to be seen: layered pieces, statement coats, designer labels, trainers or platforms, sunglasses and bags, groomed hair and their own make-up, sometimes dyed hair. Nothing is added or arranged; the setting is the pavement, kerb or plaza where they were found.

Clothes: Outfits the wearers put together to be seen, designer labels included: layering, sneakers, statement pieces.
Hair & make-up: Groomed hair and finished make-up that still look natural: even skin, defined eyes, neat brows.
How much is styled: Nothing dressed, made up, moved or added for the picture.

Step 5

Finish

Colour: White balanced to the light, so whites stay white and skin, food and products keep their real colour, with no overall cast. Strong, dense colours.
Digital & other: A modern digital camera: clean, detailed, neutral.
Texture: Smooth tones with no visible grain.
Shown as: Each picture stands on its own.
Shown in: Pictures made for a scrolling feed. Pictures made for magazine pages and spreads.
Frame: A tall frame made for phones and screens.

Stay away from tilted angle, heavy retouching, directed scene & tableau, studio backdrop, low-key & chiaroscuro, composite & montage, fully art-directed, studio props and theatrical & acted.

Before you shoot it

These are real, identifiable people photographed in public, often without being asked first and sometimes teenagers (FRUiTS followed Harajuku's young people); the pictures travel fast on blogs and feeds, where the wearer can be mocked, tracked or have the picture reused commercially without consent. For new work, ask before publishing, honour a refusal, take pictures down on request and do not photograph minors without a parent's consent.

Photographs that define it

From open collections, shown whole with their credits. Later photographs are linked, not shown, while they are in copyright.

NY fashion week 2013, day 1 (street style at Lincoln Center), by Peter T (Flickr user from Brooklyn, NY), 5 September 2013 — NY fashion week 2013, day 1 (street style at Lincoln Center)

Peter T from Brooklyn, NY, USA, 'NY fashion week 2013, day1', 5 September 2013, Flickr (rr5706507/9683900386), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Source: NY fashion week 2013, day 1 (street style at Lincoln Center) at Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

In copyright, so linked

Untitled (Amsterdam) , Scott Schuman ('The Sartorialist'), 2005. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

With other styles

The opposite: New York street photography.

Pairs with Postwar couture fashion photography. Postwar couture already took the full-length dressed figure into streets and stations; borrow its eye for silhouette and line when you choose the spot and the moment, but keep the real wearer and the unstaged street.

Pairs with Malian studio portraiture. Bamako's sitters dressed up and stood whole and frontal for the camera on their own terms; borrow that pride and square stance for a street-cast portrait series, with the street in place of the patterned cloth.

The opposite: E-commerce packshot on white. The packshot shows the garment alone on white as evidence; street style shows clothes chosen, combined and worn by a person in a real street, so choose by whether the brief sells a product or a way of wearing it.

Pairs with VSCO film-preset look. Tokyo and Instagram street snaps often carry a faded, lifted-shadow grade; lay the preset look over a street-style series when the feed calls for it, but keep the colours of the clothes readable.

Sources

The Sartorialist, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sartorialist (launched by Scott Schuman in New York in September 2005; street-style photos of people whose clothing caught his eye, sometimes with commentary; digital camera; 'I thought I could shoot people on the street the way designers looked at people'; book The Sartorialist, Penguin, 2009)
Scott Schuman, Untitled (Amsterdam), 2005, HP pigment print 5/10, Victoria and Albert Museum E.482-2010: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1159638/ (two girls in headscarves and white tunics with blue and pink ribbons; image 32.3 × 21.5 cm; given by Scott Schuman and James Danziger); with Untitled (Paris), 2007 (O1159639, O1159633) and Untitled (New York), 2008 (O1159637), read through the V&A collections API: https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/museumobject/O1159638
Catriona Hughes, 'Scott Schuman: A traditional street photographer with a fashion point of view', Daily Hive, 9 December 2019: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/scott-schuman-the-sartorialist-india-street-photographer (Schuman hopes to be seen as 'more of a street photographer with a very good fashion point of view'; 'The only other person shooting street style fashion at that time was Bill Cunningham')
Danziger Gallery, Biography: The Sartorialist: https://danzigergallery.com/attachment/en/5abb9910a09a728e158b4568/TextOneColumnWithFile/5abb996aa09a728e158b63eb (born Indianapolis, 1968; after 15 years in the fashion business he started the blog to 'simply share photos of people that I saw on the streets of New York that I thought looked great'; his full-time job by 2006, when style.com asked him to shoot in London, Paris and Milan at the time of their collections)
'The Sartorialist', Metropolis Japan, 20 May 2010: https://metropolisjapan.com/the-sartorialist/ (Schuman carrying a Canon 5D; 'I like the 85mm, but sometimes it's too tight when out on the street, so the 50mm is the safest bet'; 'I never stop it down that much')
Bill Cunningham (American photographer), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cunningham_(American_photographer) (1929–2016; 'While working at Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune, he began taking candid photographs of fashion on the streets of New York', no year given; a photo style feature for the SoHo Weekly News in 1977; December 1978 Times pictures became On the Street; On the Street and Evening Hours ran from 26 February 1989 until shortly before his death; unposed people, often at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street)
Bill Cunningham New York, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cunningham_New_York (documentary by Richard Press, produced by Philip Gefter; premiered 24 March 2010; columns On the Street and Evening Hours)
Toni Frissell, Lisa Fonssagrives in Paddington Station, London, 1951, published in Harper's Bazaar, Library of Congress cph.3g04320 via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paddington_Station_by_Toni_Frissell_1951.jpg (a postwar couture picture of a model in a real station, as in the atlas entry couture-fashion-photography)
Fruits (magazine), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruits_(magazine) (founded by Shoichi Aoki in June 1997; final issue February 2017; 233 issues; mostly single full-page photographs, each with a brief profile giving age, occupation, brands worn and a 'point of fashion'; Phaidon books Fruits, 2001, and Fresh Fruits, 2005)
Shoichi Aoki, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoichi_Aoki (born 1955; STREET from 1985; FRUiTS from 1997; TUNE from 2004; documented street fashion in Harajuku from the mid-1990s)
i-D, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-D (the Straight-Up, a documentary style pioneered by Terry Jones in 1977: a head-to-toe portrait of someone street cast with great personal style, often with a short Q&A; Jones commissioned Steve Johnston 'to photograph London punks head-to-toe against a plain white wall on the Kings Road'; i-D launched in August 1980)
V&A gallery label for E.482-2010, Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography, 2014, in the collections API record: https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/museumobject/O1159638 (titled there 'Fashion study, Amsterdam'; 'Schuman's street portraits are reminiscent of Steve Johnson's 'straight up' portraits of punks and New Wave youth, first seen in i-D in the 1980s'; 'Fellow bloggers Garance Doré and Yvan Rodic (Facehunter) produce work in the same vein'; the label's 'Since 1995' for the blog is wrong, as it opened in 2005)
Tommy Ton, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Ton (Jak & Jil conceived in 2005; fashion-week street style for Style.com and GQ after Schuman; moved away from head-to-toe shots, candid, favoured landscape orientation, details such as coat linings and heels)
Garance Doré, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garance_Dor%C3%A9 (blog from 2006; from 2007 photography of people around Paris, a format now known as street style; CFDA Eugenia Sheppard Media Award with Schuman, 2012)
Catherine Shu, 'Yvan Rodic aims to please', Taipei Times, 29 December 2010: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2010/12/29/2003492126 (Facehunter launched in January 2006 with party photos from Paris, where he then lived; lives in London; 'locations including Istanbul, Copenhagen and Sao Paulo'; 104 flights to 35 countries that year; the book Facehunter, published in January 2010, 'includes 326 images culled from his site'; a seven-country book tour of Asia)
Yvan Rodic, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvan_Rodic (born 1977 in Vevey, Switzerland; blog from 2006; travels the world photographing people at cultural and fashion events; Facehunter, Thames & Hudson, 2010)
Street fashion, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_fashion (paraphrases Cunningham: the best fashion show comes to life every day on the streets; Instagram popular among street-style amateurs and professionals; Japanese street fashion led by young people; cites Brent Luvaas, Street Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging, Bloomsbury, 2016)
Jeremy Freed, 'Can Street Style Photography Survive Its Golden Age?', Sharp, 20 June 2018: https://sharpmagazine.com/2018/06/20/can-street-style-photography-survive-its-golden-age/ (Schuman: most of what is called street style is 'just shooting fashion week'; Tommy Ton: 'It's become about being seen and about how it's going to play out on social media'; Aoki closing FRUiTS: 'There are no more cool kids to photograph')
'How to photograph street style at fashion week', Amateur Photographer, 25 September 2023, with photographs by Tobi Sobowale: https://amateurphotographer.com/technique/how-to-photograph-street-style-at-fashion-week (24–70 mm at London Fashion Week, 70–200 mm for most of New York Fashion Week; a lower f-stop to isolate the guest; capture people passing by or ask them to stop and pose; flash or continuous light for evening shows; 'for me editing does not include retouching'; f/8–f/11 to capture skin texture in beauty pictures, and in street style she loves 'showing the urban environment or the crowds of people surrounding the guests')
Feature Shoot, 'The photographer's guide to shooting street fashion', 500px ISO: https://iso.500px.com/the-photographers-guide-to-shooting-street-fashion/ (85 mm primes popular among street-style photographers for their wide aperture; blur the background; ask subjects to move into a patch of even light or shade; many start to pose as soon as they see you)
Peter T, NYFW street style, 10 September 2016 and 5 September 2013 (Lincoln Center), and Dick Thomas Johnson, Harajuku Fashion Street Snap, 16 September 2017, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0, EXIF focal lengths and apertures): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_York_Fashion_Week_September_2016_(29514216591).jpg
'How to photograph street style at fashion week', Amateur Photographer, 25 September 2023, photographs by Tobi Sobowale: https://amateurphotographer.com/technique/how-to-photograph-street-style-at-fashion-week (Canon EF 24–70 mm f/2.8 at London Fashion Week, RF 70–200 mm for most of New York Fashion Week; 'I tend to set my f stop quite high (f8- f11)', a lower f-stop to isolate the guest; captions at f/4.5 and f/5.6; flash or continuous light for evening shows)
Feature Shoot, 'The photographer's guide to shooting street fashion', 500px ISO: https://iso.500px.com/the-photographers-guide-to-shooting-street-fashion/ (85 mm primes popular among street-style photographers for their wide aperture, to blur the background)
Peter T, NYFW street style 2013 and 2016, and Dick Thomas Johnson, Harajuku Fashion Street Snap 2017, Wikimedia Commons (EXIF): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_York_Fashion_Week_September_2016_(29514216591).jpg (Nikon D90 at 35 and 45 mm, 52 and 67 mm equivalent, f/4.8–6.3, 1/320–1/500 s, ISO 500; Canon 5D Mark III at 50 mm f/1.8, 1/400 s, ISO 100)