As I have developed ShineSparkL Marketing Education, I have become quite interested in the study of luxury. I have a lingering curiosity as a marketer about the entire industry. What defines luxury? Does luxury translate beyond retail? What part of it is about money and what part about other elements? How and why does it appeal to our psychology?

The term luxury is extremely broad and used liberally. It could be that my weekly Starbucks is a luxury. It’s a break I take for myself and it makes me feel good. Or a spa day where I’m pampered and leave the grind of life behind for a while. Then there is luxury at the highest levels like private jets, remote and extreme vacation destinations, private islands and billion dollar yachts. The gap between my coffee and a spa day, and owning the most expensive yacht is literally worlds apart. We can see how this topic can be hard to nail down with one definition. One may consider flying first class luxurious, so then what is an experience of hiring a private jet? Of owning one? Of owning a fleet?

As you can see, it’s a world full of different tiers, and it’s highly nuanced. Lots to learn and unpack. Here at ShineSparkL I’m not dealing with ultra luxury, but I’m focussing my efforts on learning elements of luxury and helping photographers use these elements to help not only stand out in saturated markets but to break free of them. Accessible aspects of luxury. Most photographers focus on photography things to differentiate: more session time, more images and it often gets them nowhere because other photographers can manipulate those same variables. Few will really learn marketing or luxury principles, and that’s where true differentiation can occur - to do something that others aren’t doing. Luxury is one element that is often intimidating, so even fewer venture there. And that is indeed one trademark of luxury in and of itself - it’s only for a select few. Do you want to be one of the select few, even if just making one baby toe-dip into that world?

I went full time with my business last year, after many years of being a happy part-timer. In my journey towards this goal, I took time to study photographers that brand themselves as luxury and studied their marketing, branding and portfolios. One of the areas that I’ve been working on is my portfolio. I consider myself to serve an upper market; probably defined best as a premium rather than a luxury space. How might I take it to the next level as I evolve and grow as a full time business? I discovered 5 ways that I see where luxury photography differs from what I see in my daily life of imagery being shared on the Internet. While I reference weddings and couples in this post, these principles can apply to any photography genre.

Five ways luxury portfolios differ from the rest

Lighting

I went through a 2 year Commercial Photography program about a decade ago that kick-started my career. I had around 900 hours of instruction: classroom, studio and field work. I can safely say that I learned a lot about lighting and do pretty well. That said, there is always room for improvement. In looking through portfolios of a wide variety of styles within the luxury realm, light stands out amongst most other elements. The lesson is: you first and absolutely need to learn this most foundational and core element of photography, and then you must take it further if you aim to elevate your images. I am critically looking at the nuances of light now. How strong or soft. How strong or soft relative to the subject, the story of the image. How directional. Does the direction help or hinder. Where it falls - does it highlight the right areas? Does it spill to wrong areas even if it’s right in one area? I now look at imagery in places like Pinterest and Instagram and see how the light on the subject could have been shifted even by mere millimetres for better effect. For example, lighting that just misses the Rembrandt effect or light that just misses adding a catchlight to an eye. Light that is beautiful but spills and inadvertently distracts by highlighting an unimportant element. I am now honing my critical eye like never before and scrutinizing all of my imagery for “light misses” and refining what stays and what goes in my portfolio.

Balance in lights and darks

I really had to study this one in great detail to be able to verbalize it. It’s not that photographs being released in the luxury sector are all light and airy for example. I came across some portfolios that do use a lot of contrast and deeper shadows. Yet, there remained a softness and balance even with the richness of the dynamic range. Here is where examining your histogram is helpful. Muddy darks and blown highlights make for a harsh range. This can cast a perception that the photographer had difficulty in controlling the dynamic range of a scene, which can break the perception of being a master of their craft and earning a label of luxury. A master of their craft is able to control all that is happening in the scene. And by this I don’t mean that you control everything — a wedding ceremony can’t be scripted — but you control how you handle the elements of light and dark through settings, composition or adding/ subtracting light and modifiers. I see this happening a lot in sessions being taken in a forest for example, where subjects wearing darker clothing and have dark hair, have little separation within a dark environment. A viewer of this photograph has to work harder to discern where a shirt ends and a shadow begins and it’s fatiguing to eyes. Many mistake this for the dark and moody look, where true dark and mood still requires plenty of light but requires a critical eye to the balance and shaping of lights and darks. Which brings us back to the first point: studying the nuances of light. In the luxury realms, great care is taken to ensure finer details of the dynamic range are balanced and I also noticed that in harsher daylight circumstances, either flash is used to retain details in highlights, or backgrounds are chosen strategically to prevent overly large blown-out areas like skies.

Glow or sheen

It’s ironic that when we reflect on our glow ups, they often show glowing green grass in the first frame, with softened, more tamed greens in our latest frame. We’ve all been there with the neon grass! With our photography glow up, the elements of glow in a photograph are lessened! Glow might be created by manipulating the saturation, contrast or clarity sliders a little too heavily. An unattractive sheen from improperly used on or off camera flash has similar effect. Many a celebrity and luxury photographer uses direct flash for those “Old Hollywood” glam-type images, but if you look closely, you don’t see hot spots. The images may have harsher light due to direct flash and yet the effect is slightly matte. This has to do with how they are using their flash and any modifiers and possibly some post-production to refine the light. Be mindful of any unwanted over-glowing of areas of your images, and then keep in mind the second principle of balancing lights and darks to control this effect further.

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Take me to the details

Posing (Angle & Perspective)

I have personally noticed this in my own work, after undergoing this research. I developed a tendency to photograph a straight-on angle, especially in my wedding work. For example, couple facing each other, with their shoulders towards me. I found myself repeating this because I enjoyed how the couple was depicted in a bigger scene and it was quite symmetrical. But as I dug deeper, I realized that I didn’t “work” the pose further. I started and ended there, but I needed to push to change the angle or the pose slightly and therefore the dimensionality of the photograph. I noticed that luxury photographers use angles and perspectives particularly well in posing, and for those who have fashion/ editorial backgrounds, it’s especially noticeable in their body of work. People have dimension, and creating square compositions - facing the camera, facing each other, backs facing the camera (as in walking down a path) all have their place, but to go beyond is necessary to find a richer composition. I have now paid more attention to how I direct my couples and move around them more to gain depth with their bodies to fill the frame and to create offsetting rather than mirroring features (like no nose tips exactly pointing at each other in a silhouette but the man’s nose slightly higher and a woman’s nose slightly lower). In times when posing direction isn’t possible such as during a wedding ceremony, I now challenge myself to move around more to find this depth and richness of dimension and coax it out. In addressing this in my own body of work, I’m now noticing that a lot of imagery out there remains in that more static space.

Refinement and details

This is actually one I learned a long time ago, when first starting out, and now I’m trying to take it to the next level. I worked as an assistant to a top wedding photographer in my area, and because I was assisting rather than shooting, I had time to observe the smallest details that she paid attention to. I still use all of what I learned from her in approaching a wedding. For example, grooms should button their top button of their jacket and leave the others loose. If all the buttons are done the jacket fits too tightly and if he places a hand in a pocket, the suit pulls in an unflattering way. Or how brides and bridesmaids have a tendency to bring their bouquet up higher when walking down the aisle or when posing. A bouquet too high up blocks the view of the dress neckline and distracts from faces. I counsel all to keep bouquets at their waist, and even though they tend to forget, some small part of them remembers a wisp of a thought and the bouquet stays acceptably low.

When all other aspects of an image portray a similar look and feel - for example a backlit family at golden hour, it’s the detail within the images that illustrate a difference. I cringe for example when I see dads/grooms with pocket squares because they weren’t told to remove their phones. Luxury photographers already have mastered their light, balance and composition and once that is second nature, they have more bandwidth to keep a critical eye on details. It makes all the difference. If you saw 2 nice images of a bridal party and one image all the men’s jackets fall nicely and there are no cell phones anywhere, it will be extremely noticeable to then see a bridal party with some suit jackets open, some closed or pulling tightly and glaring cell phone squares. Train your eyes. See bra straps, hair-ties on wrists, clothes pulling, necklaces or ties crooked, even boutonnieres not pinned properly. See where hands are tense or awkward. Avoid bottoms of shoes in sitting down compositions. Also be watchful for background distractions - garbage cans, trees, people, cars etc. While I may not remove the exit sign atop the doorway that a bridal party enters the reception from, I may remove the sign for the couple’s entrance if I choose to use that image for my portfolio or website.