03. You Don't Have to Be a Model to Have an Editorial Photoshoot

Let me say it again, because I think this deserves repeating:

You do not have to be a professional model to have an editorial photoshoot!

You don't need an agency behind you. You don't need thousands of followers. You don't need to have appeared in a magazine already. You don't need a modelling contract, and you certainly don't need to know exactly what you're doing when you step in front of the camera.

You simply need a reason to want to create something and that reason can be as professional or as personal as you like! Perhaps you are an aspiring model and this is your first proper portfolio. Perhaps you're a fashion student and you've spent weeks designing something that deserves to be photographed properly. Maybe you've started creating content and you want your images to feel more considered. Maybe you're building a personal brand. Maybe you're working on an artistic project. Maybe you saw an editorial image and thought, I want that energy. That's enough!

One of the things I want to challenge is the idea that you need to be “established” before you can have professional imagery. Because how are you supposed to build your portfolio if you believe you have to already have a portfolio before you are allowed to create one?

How are you supposed to look professional if you're waiting until somebody else gives you permission to start presenting yourself professionally?

And how are you supposed to discover what you can actually do creatively if you never give yourself the opportunity to try?

Editorial photography can be part of that process.

A good photographer doesn't simply expect you to arrive knowing how to pose. You should be guided. You should be able to try something, laugh at yourself, change direction and try again. You should be able to say, “I don't know what to do here,” without feeling like you've failed the assignment. Because you're not sitting an exam.

You're creating.

That's why the relationship between photographer and subject matters so much. The best photographs often happen when somebody feels comfortable enough to stop worrying about whether they're “doing it right” and starts responding to the direction, the music, the clothing, the environment or simply the moment. Sometimes, that is where confidence comes from.

Not because you suddenly become a model overnight, but because you realise you can do something you didn't think you could. That is why editorial photography can be valuable to far more people than the industry sometimes makes it look.

You can be a beginner. You can be a student. You can be an aspiring model. You can be a creative. You can be someone who simply wants to try something new.

There isn't a secret membership card.

You just need an idea, a reason or even a little bit of curiosity.

And once you've decided you want to try it, there is usually another question waiting around the corner:

What actually happens when I book one?

Because nobody wants to turn up to a photoshoot thinking they've accidentally enrolled themselves in a course they didn't study for.