Building a fashion story

It's an exciting time to be in fashion, believes Spanish photographer, filmmaker and Canon Ambassador Javier Cortés. The industry is full of promise, and commissioners are open to a range of possibilities – including narrative features.

"Fashion is changing," says Javier. "People want to see something more than just clothes. Right now you can tell almost any story in fashion. I always try to bring something more than only a photo or a video – I try to bring an idea.

"You need to take care of the aesthetics with clothes and lighting, and to have a creative that makes the most of the art direction and styling – but the rest is down to your ideas. I love the creative part – it's like a timeless moment, creating inside your mind, and it's beautiful."

"At the end of the film, we see that the sculpture is a real woman and she comes to life," says Javier. "It's a mix between an artistic concept and a fashion film. The idea is to remind people that beauty is subjective and depends on the viewpoint. Right now, 'real women' and 'real beauty' is a trend in fashion. I think it's more than a trend – it's a movement."

Javier loves to use light and movement as part of his storytelling. "I'm obsessed with light and colour and using it as part of the narrative," he says. "It helps you to tell something more, to increase the beauty and the aesthetic."

An expert grasp of light and colour science is particularly important for Javier in the context of working with fashion brands. Inevitably, these brands have spent huge sums of money researching and perfecting the colours they use in their garments – so ensuring you can attest to accuracy, while also giving yourself room for manoeuvre in post-production, is key.

"Colour grading is one of the most important elements," says Javier. "The brands I work with know the importance. I usually explain what I want to do with references to movies or paintings."

Once an agreement is forged over a brief, the challenge is to actually make sure that look is achieved. "C-Log 3 has more natural colours, less saturation and more information in bright light and shadows," Javier says. "It's much better when you want to put on a heavy colour grade in post-production."

Javier believes that the development of EOS R System cameras, with their low-light capabilities and the integration of C-Log 3, really supports this pursuit of stripped-back lighting. "The sensitivity of these cameras is fantastic," he says. "You can achieve very professional results using a modelling light from a flash or lights available on location."

For those who do make the leap and switch from a DSLR or mirrorless body to a cinema camera such as the Canon EOS C200, Canon EOS C300 Mark III or EOS C500 Mark II, there is also the option to shoot in Cinema RAW Light. This colour profile gives you the option to shoot in full RAW, with all of the quality headroom that entails, but with smaller file sizes and high levels of flexibility in post-production, as the gamma curve and processing parameters are not set at the moment of capture.

For Javier, there are some key considerations when choosing a body that will work for a particular shoot. Can he be as physically flexible and manoeuvrable as he would like to be? And does that body support the format he needs to shoot in?

For Beauty is Subjective, Javier – who has always shot on Canon – teamed a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with his favourite L-series EF lenses – the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM, Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM and Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM. He now pairs a Canon EOS C200 and a Canon EOS R5 with the Canon RF 50mm F1.2L USM and a Canon RF 28-70mm F2L USM for most of his fashion shoots.

When movement is key, Javier primarily finds himself reaching for the Canon EOS R5 or EOS R6. "In some advertisements, you need to place the camera at difficult angles, like clinging to the body of an actor," he explains. "I also use them for documentary shoots or medium-length fashion documentaries."

For Beauty is Subjective, Javier stuck to his preference for a streamlined setup, including a basic gimbal, to add smoothness to moving video shots, and a few basic box lights. As the models, including street-cast extras, arrived on set, the museum took shape. Simple white walls were moved into place to create the spaces for the film and photographs – gallery rooms, corridors and even an elevator.

Shooting video in 4K at 25fps meant Javier captured high-resolution footage, while 50fps in Full HD enabled slow motion playback. "Using different frame rates gives me more possibilities during editing," says Javier. "I use 4K because sometimes you want to crop or stabilise shots afterwards, and 4K helps you to have more detail. I used Full HD in some shots because I wanted to capture more frames per second in order to use slow motion."

High performance memory cards allowed for 4K recording thanks to their fast write speeds of up to 160MB/s. To deal with the larger volumes of data generated by shooting in high resolution, Javier used 64GB cards and regularly backed up onto 1TB hard drives.

The Canon EOS R3 and EOS R5 utilise dual storage slots, with one universal SD slot and a second CFexpress slot for recording high-resolution video, such as 8K RAW or ALL-I and 4K at up to 120p. This gives filmmakers like Javier all the flexibility they need to ensure they can shoot in the pace, style and format required at any given moment.