ghost mannequin photography of workwear tunics

Ghost mannequin (or ghost mannequin photography) is a term that you will see increasingly, but what is it?

It’s a style of photographing clothes so they look as if they are being worn.  In other words, the clothes look ‘fleshed out’ so you can see the actual shape of the garment; as opposed to ‘lay flat’, where – as the term implies – the clothes are neatly folded and photographed.  It’s a specialist technique to accomplish, and quite time consuming, but worth it for the look that it creates.

I won’t bore you with the technical details of how to create the look as one is especially technical and, unless you’re a product photographer yourself, not especially interesting.  All that you need to know is, if it’s a look you’re after, the great benefit is the photos are always shot against a plain background (often white) so the images can be easily cut out by a designer to drop into a catalogue, promo material, and so on.  In this instance, a pale blue was chosen as in all likelihood the background will be reproduced in the catalogue that the company produces, so it saved the designer hours of hard work!

I’ve put a few examples below from a recent product photography shoot for Harveys Workwear, manufacturers and suppliers of workwear to hospitals, health clinics, beauty salons and so on – basically, anywhere where staff wear tunics.  It seemed quite appropriate to use this example in the present time!  Overall I spent two days in the company’s warehouse shooting all the product lines in all the different colourways.  This look could be achieved anywhere though – it relies on technique rather than a vast studio space.

ghost mannequin photos of healthcare tunics against blue background ghost mannequin photography examples

The reduction in location photography has made me look through my archives recently and I realise that I’ve shot quite a lot of different product photography over the past couple of years.  I’ll post some more examples to show the range of what I’ve done over the next few weeks.