You have to strive for the #flyingdress fashion trend.
The key to capturing the perfect flying dress photo is muscle and momentum, not Photoshop.
The lavish images may even help puff out the 10-foot-long dress, while the subject walks briskly to achieve the flowing train seen on social media.
You also need everyone to pay attention to the weather.
“What I have to keep in mind is not to go against the wind because it will blow the other way,” Leo Cabrera, 36, who runs a New York City photography company that specializes in shoots with subjects wearing voluminous dresses with flowing trains in picture-perfect vacation destinations.
Cabrera normally operates as a one-man show using a tripod for his camera, creating a windswept wave effect with the trains of the dress as he coaches his subjects on how to pose.
But sometimes, you’ll have two assistants at the ready.
“At first we tried a lot of different things: tossing the dress in the air, grabbing it and letting go, and shaking the fabric to get movement in the photo,” Cabrera, who typically shoots in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, around Central Park, and in destinations like Dubai and the Dominican Republic.
Due to the labor-intensive nature of the shoot, Cabrera says she only books two a day, with rates starting at $400 for a one-hour session and one dress rental, and has already done 100 in the last anus.
“You have to be ready for that moment and grab the dress to make it flow, that’s the hardest part. If I don’t get the shot I want, I have to repeat the movements by shaking the cloth. My arms get tired,” she told The Post.
Initially, Cabrera thought the key to achieving the perfectly airy angle would be to make the subject run fast in the dress, but when customers started tripping over the long lines, she reevaluated.
“If you run, the fabric will get dirty and you can fall; it’s more about walking fast and shaking the dress with both hands to get the perfect shot,” she said of his rhythmic creative direction.
The photo of the flying dress has become an unpretentious bucket list item for travelers to check off their list at vacation destinations in places like the Greek Isles, Dubai, Cappadocia in Turkey, and on excursions through the quaint Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, among others.
The #FlyingDress hashtag has 52.6 million views on TikTok, and photographers in some of the most sought-after vacation destinations are cashing in on the trend.
More and more photographers are cashing in on the trend.
Flying Dress photo company has a package for around $1,680 that includes transportation to and from the session, hair and makeup, dress, a two-hour session, editing, retouching, and ownership of the photo and video rights.
And the glamorous photo also doubles as a sort of digital postcard for travelers to post and show off on social media.
In fact, when Georgia-based travel agent and content creator Adriannea Smith booked a Santorini-bound cruise specifically with a flying dress photo shoot in mind, posing in the canary-yellow dress, she said, was more difficult than it seemed.
“The dress is so heavy that the wind is blowing and you are trying to hold still,” Smith recalled to the Post.
“The assistant is grabbing the end of your dress, then the photographer is counting down and the assistant is going to throw the dress a certain way. It depends on how the wind moves when the photographer directs them,” she explained, noting that, comically, she had to hobble over hot cobblestones for the sizzling summer shoot that is normally done barefoot.
She said the shoot was worth every penny, helping her promote her business through her Instagram @StandByAdrie posting a reel to the tune of 20,000 views and over 480 likes on Instagram.
Having a bit of a Cinderella moment is priceless, he said.
“I felt like a super model,” she told The Post.