Editorial portrait
Soft box light, pale grey paper, tailored blazer.
8 photos
Editorial portrait is built for the kind of picture that runs full page at the front of a fashion magazine: a seamless pale grey paper backdrop, one large soft box held just off axis, and a gentle falloff of light across one side of the face. It is calm rather than dramatic, closer to a sitting for a magazine profile than a flash caught on the street.
The subject wears a structured wool blazer over a plain crew neck, cropped to head and shoulders with the chin held level and a steady, unsmiling gaze straight into the lens. Nothing in the frame competes with the face: no jewellery, no pattern, no visible hands.
This category works well as a professional-looking portrait for a byline photo, a book jacket, or a profile page, and it depends on your original photo showing the shoulders and a little of the neckline, since a very tight crop leaves the model guessing at where the blazer collar should sit.
What makes a good photo to start from
Use a source photo that includes your shoulders and some neckline rather than a tight face crop, so the blazer collar has real anatomy to follow.
What this look will not do
The blazer's exact cut and colour are chosen by the model each time, so it cannot match a specific jacket you own or a particular brand.
Questions
- Will it use the actual blazer from my wardrobe?
- No, editorial portrait generates its own structured blazer for every image, so a jacket you own or a specific brand will not appear.
- Can the backdrop be a colour other than grey?
- No, the pale grey seamless paper is fixed to this category, since it is what gives editorial portrait its clean, magazine page look.
- Why is it cropped so tightly to head and shoulders?
- The head and shoulders crop matches the format used for magazine bylines and book jackets, which this category is designed to imitate.