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Via U Photography, Bandipora (2026)

24/06/2022

Ruth Orkin’s photograph “An American Girl in Italy” is one of those special pictures that gets to bring about controversy in spite of the passage of time. It first appeared in a 1952 Cosmopolitan article giving tips to women travelling alone. The photograph illustrated the newly found spirit of independence and confidence that American women got after the war.

At age 23, Ninalee Craig quit her job in New York to travel in Europe. At her $1-a-night hotel in Florence she met freelance photographer Ruth Orkin. “She was living from day to day, nickel-and-diming it” Ninalee recalled. Ruth told Ninalee that she could make some money taking pictures showing what was like to be a woman travelling alone and asked her to model. The picture run with the caption: "Public admiration … shouldn’t fluster you. Ogling the ladies is a popular, harmless and flattering pastime you’ll run into in many foreign countries".

In the 70's, taped to the walls of college dorms the photograph was recognized as an emblem of inner strength and became part of the feminist movement iconography. In its current reincarnation the same picture is seen as an expose of abuse. A 2021 Vogue article describes it as "an illustration of a female strolling and the unwelcome attention of men".

In a 2014 interview Ninalee was asked if she felt frightened or angry by so many men looking at her. At age 87 she said "I was young, free and having the time of my life. At no time I felt unhappy or harassed or offended". "To me the photograph is not a representation of harassment, it's a picture of a woman having an absolutely wonderful time".

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/howitwork.html

01/03/2022

The "Million Dollar Miracle Bra" was a 1996 Victoria's Secret publicity stunt. It was the first in a sequence of masterful marketing moves that helped the label become one of the most valuable apparel brands with over 1,400 stores and 32% of the market share.

As the name implies the campaign involved a bra made of lots of expensive stones, a top model and not much else. The one supporting Candice Swanepoel in the picture is adorned with 4,200 rubies, diamonds and yellow sapphires. All that hand-set in an 18-carat gold mesh with a price tag of $10 million.

The stunt spinned-off into a network aired fashion show that the company used to market goods in a high-profile setting. The annual extravaganza featured the who's who of modeling and pop music. At its peak the super bowl of fashion shows enjoyed a worldwide audience of over 500 million with 30-second spots selling for $1.8 million. Let that hit you... VS made their marketing effort an income generating activity.

Winds shift fast. By 2019 poor ratings led to the cancellation of the show, the brand's market share was down to 19% and the stock at $8 from $76. It was perhaps the CEO who best captured the moral of the story "Fashion is a business of change and we must change to grow".

Inspired by the spirit of the age the brand is directing an amazing turnaround from fantasy to inclusiveness. Oversize mannequins, transgender models, gender-neutral products. Again, the CEO, "We’re moving from sexy for a few to sexy for all".

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

17/02/2022

The first photograph of a woman also marks several technical accomplishments. History is unjust to overlook other Dorothy Draper's contributions that make the picture significant.

Dorothy was born in England in 1807. She watched the industrial revolution transform her small village into a boom town fueled by coal and copper. Technological innovations turning professions obsolete and radical new economic and philosophical thoughts replacing traditional ideas. Like for us today, it may have appeared to her that nothing was very permanent.

She became an artist. After her father's death the family sailed to the US. Dorothy thought drawing to pay for the education of her younger brother John who become a chemist. On a bright summer day of 1840 Dorothy and John climbed to the roof of a building around Washington Square in NYC to set up for the picture that was to become famous.

In the early days of photography taking a picture needed very long exposures. John had improved the chemistry of the method to cut the time from hours to about a minute. He aimed at knocking the socks off his peers by being the first to take a sharp picture of a person. Dorothy was going to model but she above all her interest was to create an alluring picture.

She chose the newest fashions. The floral head headdress was a prop used in paintings and that had become popular after Queen Victoria wore one to her wedding. She decided on the off-center composition and, this is what knocks my socks off, was the first one to control light so as to create a mood in a photograph.

All in all, besides being the first woman in a photograph Dorothy was also the first art director, the first fashion stylist and the first studio photographer.

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

15/11/2021

Shutterstock says to have witnessed a surge of 553% in searches related to hiking and a 368% increase in images associated with camping over the last year.

EyeEm, a picture stock agency that uses artificial intelligence to find the right images for clients, believes that lockdowns have led to a broad range of new consumer habits. The company thinks that lockdowns may have triggered Millennials and Gen Zers to grow a renewed interest in the outdoors as a source of therapy, or stability, and suggests to integrate pictures of natural elements into a brand’s visuals.

Interesting information you may say, but what is a cosmetics brand to make out of it?

Marketing images associating a product with the purity found in nature is the oldest, perhaps most widespread form of appeal used by the industry. The issue is how to create pictures that call to mind the outdoors that are also as fresh as a daisy.

What the stock agencies are saying is that people have an interest in going out. Photographers have the practice of bringing small samples of nature into their studios where they have more control and, why not say it, more comfort.

What if we were to reverse the process and bring the product out to where nature is?

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

26/10/2021

In theory, a marketing image of a beauty product in an everyday situation created in a style to convey informality should present the Catch-22 of making the mundane interesting to look at. Fortunately, photography has always been about turning the ordinary into extraordinary.

Realism has been the prevalent style in the arts at many periods. It is generally defined as a painter's attempt to represent subject matter truthfully with the avoidance of unnatural elements or stylization. Since it is understood that a painting is implicitly a fantasy the intention of a Realist artist is to produce amazement through the illusion of reality.

On the other hand, a photograph is a straightforward record of a moment. A photographer's goal is to create images that can make the material experience transcend. A good photograph makes the familiar fresh. A really, really, good photograph can move us into personal reflections about life and our place in the universe.

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

23/09/2021

On Singles' Day 2020, during his four-hour livestream on Taobao Austin Li sold 10 million pieces of goods worth US$145 million. A masterful performance with some remarkable highlights. In a 3 minute stretch he managed to move 5,000 Shiseido Ultimunes and 150,000 lip glosses were sold in a span of an hour.

E-commerce in China is projected to grow by 20% and account for more than 50% of the country's retail sales in 2021. The opportunity came out of desperation. During the pandemic lockdowns a few brands trained salespeople to begin hosting live video streams where viewers could get tips and buy products. Livestream become a phenomenon and within months, despite a plunge in store sales, overall sales were up 20% from a year earlier.

Before becoming a household name Austin was a behind-the-counter shop assistant for L’Oréal where he polished his sales skills and developed his unique vocabulary. In Li’s semantics, colors are never just coral or peach but “a color that made my heart stop” or “a color that is tender like water”. The show leverages Austin's talents in a sort of fast-paced HSN with the generic cinematic quality of a teenage influencer broadcasting from a bedroom. A single continuous camera angle and the conventional ring light.

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

09/09/2021

A low camera angle gives a feeling of consequence to a product. That looking up inspires to reverence is universally understood, a criterion considered by the builders of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Gyza. A camera looking up, for instance, can make a 13 fl. oz. bottle feel to be as tall as a house.

Is water wet?

In the 1980's market research analysts though necessary to explore the hypothesis that the camera angle used in a photograph may affect viewers' evaluation of a product. The results of their studies were printed in editions thousands of words long with tables, mathematical formulas and long lists of footnotes. Delivered in 3-Ring binders with suggestive titles like: "Using Stylistic Properties of Ad Pictures to Communicate with Consumers" or "The Effect of Camera Angle on Product Evaluation”.

In short, findings suggest that when viewers motivation to read ad information was low looking up produced the most favorable product evaluations, conversely, looking down the least favorable. However, when motivation to process information was moderate, or high, then the most favorable evaluations were from eye-level pictures.

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

17/08/2021

Jayne Mansfield is credited with the phrase: “Even bad press is good press". At age 24, fearing that her career was becoming short lived she decided to steal the moment at a Paramount Studios event promoting Sophia Loren. It is remembered as of the most memorable publicity stunts in Hollywood history.

She was the last one to arrive. Wearing a spaghetti strap cocktail dress that had been adjusted to fit so tight that it had to be sewn in. Decked out in platinum curls, swaying on high heels Mansfield walked slowly straight for Loren's table. The press parted like the Red Sea to let her through. As she got close she slipped off a white mink and softly told them: “Glad we have warm weather around here or I’d freeze”.

The cameras went crazy and, as hoped, the pictures created a scandal appearing in the front pages of newspapers and magazines worldwide.

Born to an upper middle-class family Jayne Mansfield was educated at USM, UT Austin and UCLA. Spoke five languages and enjoyed an impressive I.Q. of 163. In an interview she once remarked that the public did not care about her brains: "They're more interested in 40–21–35".

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

16/07/2021

Beyond the original purpose of creating a richer shopping experience the swatch has become a way of making a brand statement all on its own. Spontaneous, silky, powerful, flawless. A humble smudge on a few square inches of surface can say a lot for what a brand is about.

As real life is, eluding over retouching and including imperfections makes each of Glossier's swatches have personality. They tell us about color and texture and about the movement and pressure of the hand that created them. Mac's are delicate like flower petals with the lightness and transparency of watercolors.

Swathes are now an area of specialization; photographers display samples under a section in their websites named "Textures". Remarkably, at a time when brands endeavor establishing a strong look of their own the style seen in most portfolios varies little from one photographer to another.

The conventional image is a high production costs stylized collage of smudges from miscellaneous products. A kind of one picture showroom of swatch creating skills that involve styling, lighting and Photoshop.

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

02/06/2021

The first photograph was taken by Nicéphore Niépce in 1827. It is the view from a second-floor window of his estate and shows part of the house and surrounding countryside. The sandy 16x20 centimeters image, imprinted on a thin leaf of tin, marks the genesis of a cultural transformation that made visual storytelling the preferred way for making a persuasive argument over the last 100 years.

Creating an image using the bleaching affects that light has on certain chemicals was already known, Nicéphore's contribution was to find a way to make the changes permanent. The rudimentary underpinnings of the method required an exposure that lasted several days but, be as it may, once finished Nicéphore had in his hands for the first time a record of the ephemeral passing of time.

In a few years a rapid chain of developments made photography readily available and eventually led to the invention of film, x-rays, television, video and the digital image. You can trace back to Nicéphore's picture that we're able to see distant galaxies, or the atom spliting. That we have Hollywood starts, NFL instant replay and Instagram.

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

20/05/2021

A close-up of suds makes them become as interesting as the surface of Mars. Without a question, whether is an alien planet or the active ingredients in a personal care product, a photograph of the unfamiliar gets more attention than that of things we already know. Yet, product close-ups are seldom employed in beauty marketing.

So, here is a type of image that by showing detail unavailable to the naked eye creates a sense of discovery and wonder. That can add poetry to a description on the benefits of chemical formulations and to intimately illuminate on the purity of ingredients. A picture that is foolproof to get eyeballs but is rarely considered.

My belief is that when photographing something really close it's better to work without preconceived ideas. That since the strength of a close-up rests on freshness an exploration of the possibilities of the moment is more likely to create unexpected results.

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

04/05/2021

As the use in marketing of an image of the "modern sensitive man" become widespread to eventually affect the look of large corporations so did the pictures lost their edge to become status quo. Quietly a countertrend simultaneously developed and was adopted by niche brands inspired to be atypical. It may be possible that we have already entered the yang part of the cycle, when images of traditional characteristics associated with masculinity have the shock value that stir strong reactions in the general audience.

The Bluebeards Revenge is a male grooming company that appeals to their buyers with an unabashed, unapologetic, 21st Century version of the Marlboro man. Managing director David Hildrew believes that the success of the brand is result of creating a personality that their buyers can relate to and that is unique, “you need to get across you are different". In a segment dominated by international giants, the brand has gathered global appeal and sells their products in over 100 countries.

Before the pandemic the global wet shave market size was valued at USD 11.2 billion and estimated to grow at a CAGR of 9.5% until 2025.

Expert cosmetics photography, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. https://www.viauphotography.com/blog/addexpert/

Via U Photography

24/06/2022

01/03/2022

17/02/2022

15/11/2021

26/10/2021

23/09/2021

09/09/2021

17/08/2021

16/07/2021

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