It is now time to speak a little of how to make the best fashion photography shoots taking advantage of the place we live in.

We don’t all live in pretty London with pretty bloggerish streets and corners, fancy Instagrammable cafès, cool vintage markets and iconic sceneries, so what? How can we be creative either way?

With time I learned that it doesn’t matter where you live to create great blogging content – especially for someone interested in fashion, travel and photography.

It is true how beautiful London, New York and so many other cities can be, but wherever we live, there is something spectacular and worth photographing.

Location: Poggio Renatico, Italy

Photography: Federico Pandini

Camera: Leica M9

How to Make the Best Out of Your Territory

1.Research first

Dig into fashion and travel magazines, gather a few ideas, catch up on your favourite Instagrammers’ feeds or watch a movie. The important is to then note down what gets your interest. Write it on a post-it or make a new list on your phone, called “Ideas for future fashion shoots“.

2.  Have a walk

It is now time to have a walk downtown and write down or photograph all the spots you love. I say walk, but you can also bike, skate or drive – anything you feel like doing. You can also use a shopping session for this.

Anyway, whether you live in a city or a small town, you may want to write down:

• new cute cafè
• lovely graffiti wall
• amazing old building
• nice white wall

all ready to be there when you’ll need them, so that the process of finding a spot to have nice looking pictures comes faster.

On the other hand, if you live in the middle of nowhere (hello me!) why not taking advantage of this and find some awesome countryside landscapes? As you may see from these pictures, countryside has a real fascination over me. You can drive along, make the same list of nice places and have it there for when you’ll need it.

What I am wearing: Burberry Brit coat (old) / Zaful ‘Youth’ Baseball Hat / Zara Backpack (on sale!!) / Rayban Black Wayfarer / Zara scarf / Asos Boots

3. Enjoy it

Use the time of taking pictures as quality time. Ask your friend for some help in exchange of some great time together. You will have a few hours to spend together, laugh, walk, enjoy nature, sightseeing while taking photographs.

Here we went exploring abandoned houses, we drove through long countryside roads, stopped to see tiny frozen lakes and kept doing this for quite a long time.

4. Create Your Style

This is the most difficult one: create your own style through fashion photography. Difficult because first of all you will need to give precise directions to a photographer (professional or not), then you will have to check the pictures and edit them in the way you like.

This is a long process but after some time blogging, you will start to notice what you like to have. For me I can now say I have a few standard spots I like:

• the open infinite road
• nice profiles with a blurry background
• full body images
• nice windows
• graffitis
• white brick walls

The choice is really personal and it says a lot of your style and of your personality. I can only give you guidelines but then is up to you and your creativity. And of course, when I happen to be in London, I will be the first one to go straight to Kensington and Notting Hill. (I am saying London because is the closest one, if I could fly to NYC every week, well… I think I will need another blog post to write everywhere I would go!!).

Do you have other tips?

Hope you find these useful.

xo Cate

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