Monday, March 29, 2010

Glamour photography, Nude photography, Fashion photography:

Glamour photography:
Glamour photography is a genre of photography whereby the subjects, usually female, are portrayed in a romantic or sexually alluring way. The subjects may be fully clothed or seminude, but glamour photography stops short of deliberately arousing the viewer and being softcore pornography.
Glamour photography is generally a
composed image of a subject in a still position. The subjects of glamour photography are often professional models, and the photographs are normally intended for commercial use, including mass-produced calendars, pinups and for men's magazines, such as Playboy; but amateur subjects are also sometimes used, and sometimes the photographs are intended for private and personal use only. Photographers use a combination of cosmetics, lighting and airbrushing techniques to produce an appealing image of the subject.
In North America, glamour photography of models does not usually involve fully topless shots, whereas in the UK and elsewhere topless shots are generally considered acceptable in glamour photography.
Early glamour modeling was often associated with "French postcards", small
postcard sized images, that were sold by street vendors in France. In the early 1900s the pinup became popular and depicted scantily dressed women often in a playful pose seemingly surprised or startled by the viewer. The subject would usually have an expression of delight which seemed to invite the viewer to come and play. Betty Grable was one of the most famous pinup models of all time; her pinup in a bathing suit was extremely popular with World War II soldiers.
In December 1953,
Marilyn Monroe was featured in the first issue of Playboy magazine. Bettie Page was the Playmate of the Month in January 1955. Playboy was the first magazine featuring nude glamour photography targeted at the mainstream consumer.
The British Queen of Curves in the 1950s and early sixties was
Pamela Green. Harrison Marks, on the encouragement of Green, took up glamour photography and together in 1957 they published the pinup magazine Kamera. Currently in England the earliest use of the word "glamour" as a euphemism for nude modeling or photography is attributed to Marks' publicity material in 1950s.
Glamour models popular in the early 1990s included Hope Talmons and
Dita Von Teese and the modern era is represented in the U.S. by models like Heidi Van Horne and Bernie Dexter, while the UK's leading representative of the genre is Lucy Pinder.
Nude photography:
Nude photography is a style of
art photography which depicts the nude human body as a study. Nude photography should be distinguished from erotic photography, which has a sexually suggestive component. Nude photography should also be distinguished from glamour photography, which places more emphasis on the model and her/his sexuality, and treats the model as the primary subject.
Many photographers consider an
art nude photograph to be a one that studies the human body, rather than the person. A photograph of a person that is meant to be recognized is called a portrait, and nude photographs often do not show a face at all. Nude photography is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. As an art form, nude photography is a stylized depiction of the nude body with the line and form of the human figure as the primary objective. Photographers sometimes use extremes of light and shadow, oiled skin, and shadows falling across the body to show texture and structure of the body.
Early photographers often depicted the nudity of women like the one we see here by
Félix-Jacques Moulin. Many, like Edward Weston, Ruth Bernhard and Jerry Avenaim, preferred to depict the lines of a body as a piece of art. They imported from the terminology of painting the terms art nude and figurenude to avoid suggestions that their works were erotica or pornography.
Fashion photography:
Fashion photography is a genre of
photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items. Fashion photography is most often conducted for advertisements or fashion magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, or Allure. Over time, fashion photography has developed its own aesthetic in which the clothes and fashions are enhanced by exotic locations and story lines or could be having great models with different vehicles or animals just to be an eye catching effect.