Understated Luxury in Frame: 5 Tips from Photographer Lev Mazaraki

Social media has dramatically changed the idea of what makes a beautiful photograph in recent years. For example, saturated colors and strong contrast were long perceived as signs of quality editing. “People very often confuse ‘bright’ with ‘expensive.’ They want to make every highlight more noticeable. As a result, a photograph starts literally shouting. But expensive visuals follow different laws,” says Lev Mazaraki. According to him, a good photo doesn’t give the impression that the photographer is trying to show everything beautiful in front of the camera all at once. The luxury effect is achieved through a combination of factors.

The first thing to pay attention to is lighting. “The main thing is for a photographer to understand where the light is coming from and what it’s doing to a face or an object,” explains Mazaraki. Photographs are very often cheapened by light an author doesn’t control. That includes, for example, a flash straight to a face, a random overhead source, overexposed skin, or shadows appearing where none were planned. The safest option is soft side light, for instance, from a window. On an overcast day, it preserves the volume of a face without creating harsh, random shadows. Outdoors, similar conditions are easiest to find in the morning or closer to sunset.

“But luxury itself doesn’t equal soft light. Even hard light can look very expensive if it serves volume and composition,” says the photographer. A good example is the famous photograph Mainbocher Corset, taken by Horst P. Horst for Vogue in 1939. “Here, the light is nothing like the soft, even illumination usually recommended to beginners. On the contrary, it’s directional and dramatic. The model’s figure emerges from the darkness, and the light emphasizes the lines of her back and the corset itself. You can see how the lighting turns a fairly minimalist scene into one of the most recognizable frames in fashion photography,” says Lev Mazaraki.

Another important marker is the overall color logic of a photograph. If you look closely at advertising campaigns from fashion houses or shoots of expensive interiors, you’ll notice that shades there rarely exist on their own. They support each other. One can slide into a cliché: everything beige or monochrome. “But that’s not a panacea either. A bright color can absolutely be the foundation of a frame. The problem starts when several equally active shades end up side by side and each one pulls attention. When there are too many colors and they’re all equally noticeable, the eye starts to dart around,” says Mazaraki.

The simplest example is photographing someone in a restaurant. Say your subject is wearing a dark green jacket, the interior is done in warm wood tones, and behind them sits a bright blue bag. In real life, you might not even notice that bag. In the photograph, it suddenly becomes one of the main objects. But remove it from the frame or shift the angle slightly, and the image immediately starts to look more cohesive. Sometimes it’s enough to look through the edges of the frame and remove whatever disrupts its color harmony.

Another common mistake is the urge to fill every bit of space. “They put a person in the center, try to show the interior beside them, grab the view from a window while they are at it, and make sure to preserve that one object seeming especially beautiful. But the feeling of status often emerges precisely where a photographer isn’t afraid of emptiness,” believes Lev Mazaraki. “Empty space helps understand what’s truly important in a frame.”

This is noticeable even in an ordinary vacation photo. A person on a balcony of a nice hotel with a sea view can be shot in close-up, trying to squeeze in a table, chairs, and part of a room all at once. Or you can step back and leave a large expanse of sky and wall around the figure. In the second case, there’s formally less information, but the frame will most likely look more expensive. “Understatement creates a sense of calm. And there’s no need to fill every inch to hold attention,” says Mazaraki.

Retouching is a subject all its own. Photographs with very high saturation and sharpness used to be popular. Now such editing looks outdated. When it comes to portraits, even non-professionals have noticed this. Completely removing skin pores is technically easy, but afterward a face starts to resemble a plastic mask.

Modern “expensive” visuals, by contrast, lean toward naturalness. A good example is the work of Peter Lindbergh. His photographs always feature living faces, a minimum of showy gloss, and the feeling of an almost accidentally caught moment. “If viewers notice editing first thing, then it’s already getting in the way of a photograph,” believes Lev Mazaraki. Expensive editing, on the other hand, sometimes looks as if a photograph was barely touched at all.

Expensiveness doesn’t have to be proven directly. A large logo in the center of a shot or a deliberately displayed branded package instantly changes its meaning. Instead of atmosphere, you get a message: “Notice me, this thing is expensive!”

One of the most famous examples of the opposite approach is Richard Avedon’s Dovima with Elephants, shot in 1955 for Harper’s Bazaar. She is wearing an evening gown by Dior, with circus elephants beside her. But the photograph isn’t structured like a catalog of luxury items. There is no giant Dior logo, nothing at all that would explain to viewers the cost of what’s happening. The elegance is born from the contrast between the model’s fragile figure and the massive animals. The image became part of fashion photography history.

“If the quality of a frame already reads, it doesn’t need extra hints,” says Lev Mazaraki. In his view, the same logic applies to ordinary photography. On a trip, for example, an empty hotel room at dawn can look more convincing than a photo of a person standing next to the hotel’s name. Mazaraki believes it’s precisely this restraint that distinguishes high-level visuals from an attempt to imitate them.