Industrial Clothing Shoot

Industrial Clothing Shoot

I conduct many shoots for London Couture, a rising vintage couture fashion business in Tacoma. We hold some type of photo shoot once week on average, so… they keep me pretty busy. They sell many styles of clothing, each speaking to fashion-minded people in varying ways. As described by my client, the designer of the clothing line for this particular shoot was by definition dark, utilizing the spectrum of colors that can be summed-up as dull and muted. It definitely wasn’t a happy and warm clothing line. To meet client’s needs I will often start off by asking them, “so, what does this look like in your head, what do you see, what ‘hits home’ as far as an environment for these items you are selling?” All feedback I received for this shoot pointed to an industrial look. To the shadiest part of town we go!

The industrial area is an interesting place, to say the least. It’s like a different world. Gone are the cars going in every direction, all with a different destination, and equally busy people making their way by foot. The streets here are a lot more lonely, with the occasional semi truck roaring by, and if there is anyone walking around… well, they are not the kind of people you’d exactly give a ride home, if you know what I mean. All the buildings are huge, some bustling with all kinds of traffic and loud noise, others lay dormant and condemned. It’s in these pockets of dormant buildings where you can find some pretty cool little spots to shoot. You usually run into a different kind of folk there too, a lot of hard-edged men not scared to tell you how much they don’t appreciate you in and around their place of work. So I always keep my distance from any buildings with any activity (and more preferably on the other end of a long block).

  

For this photo series, I didn’t venture down to the industrial area to toss a model in the “thick” of the environment down there. I selected the location because from certain spots there you can manage to snag a good look of the cityscape in the background. There is an especially old, out of commission bridge with a lot of character in this neck of the woods (er, park), and I knew it would be a good touch. So a good mix of the environment where we have the model staged amongst grungier stuff, and visuals of the city itself. We photographed a couple looks down there, and then repeated the same looks in the studio, giving my client flexible marketing material. The studio repeating the same kind of idea, a grey background to match the mood of the clothing.

  

I have a lot of great, diverse blog posts coming your way in the next month or so. Some are about some pretty unique shooting adventures, and some are about the specific gear that I used to get the jobs done. Check back soon for that stuff!