Time to get creative! The fresh April air and the extra radiant hours are perfect excuses to drop everything and get out making new images. We had a look at the latest trends and found out what type of content and styles to focus on this quarter.
People, culture and politics
Here in the UK, election time is sneaking up on us. This means we鈥檙e all slightly more fixated on our values than normal. How can we do better than the last four years and how will local communities fit into the bigger picture? Have a closer look at your own community and make images that are communicating change.
Optimism is one of the big themes this year. Keep this one in mind because it can be transferred to all types of pictures. Portray people who are celebrating life, no matter what age or culture. Praise the positive outcome of things, not the struggle to get there. There is also strong optimism to be seen in the growth of small businesses, and this can be reflected in the way you picture today鈥檚 working men and women.
The trendy man today is the typical everyday hero. He is a passionate craftsman with an eye for quality, but a stay-at-home dad when needed. More time for family life is an important value for the modern man. He likes to cook too, and we鈥檙e not talking about the king of the BBQ here, this man will dish up a quinoa salad with crispy beetroot garniture. Meanwhile the portrayed female is stronger than ever. She is a leader, she is innovative and she is active. Sport England鈥檚 new campaign is a good example of the new woman. The mixing up of gender roles does not stop here – the world of fashion has embraced this opportunity to create new styles and it is getting more and more popular to have transgender models on the catwalk. androgyny is about to get off the catwalk and into the high street.
‘Scandimania’ and monochrome
Let鈥檚 not forget about aesthetics and style. Monochrome photography has been around for a while, and it looks like the trend is here to stay. The style has often been used to describe pictures, designs and paintings that only consist of one colour or different shades of the same colour. Today we see a lot of images, perhaps not consisting of just shades from one colour, but heavily influenced by one tone. With good help from some clever Scandinavian crime drama producers, our Northern neighbours have been in the spotlight for a while and no doubt this has inspired photographers to create images with that crisp and light colour tone.
Not a bad trend to follow as designers get weak at the knees from clean imagery blending in with slick typography, like strawberries on your ice cream.
The dramatic nature trend might have sprung out from here too. A lot of brands are using epic landscapes to seek our attention at the moment and perhaps this takes us back to our core values. With apps for absolutely everything and worrying thoughts of our future 3D printed meals, it鈥檚 somehow comforting to be reminded about the more natural wonders of the world…
This is only a swift breeze from the whirlwind of trends surrounding us at the moment, but hopefully enough to inspire some great new photography projects.