What to Wear to your Photoshoot – a helpful guide by Emma Louise Photography
One of the most regular questions I’m asked by clients about their portrait sessions is “What should I wear for our photoshoot?” Let’s start with a ‘Colours of the Rainbow’ gallery of ideas, featuring sophisticated voilet and calming blue; fresh and vibrant green to fun and happy yellow. Tangy and optimistic orange or red; the colour of love, power and passion. These boards along with the following suggestions are designed to inspire and guide your clothing choices for your photography session.
I hope the following What to Wear guides offer you some inspiration. I will be sharing some of these suggestions within blog posts as the seasons progress.
[ezcol_1half]What to Wear Do’s:
- Wear something well fitting, and most importantly that you’re comfortable in.
- Long sleeved white tops and jeans really work well against a pale or white background.
- Black tops add extra contrast against most types of backgrounds and can really draw out the features of your face.
- Colour blocking rather than the busyness of patterns tend to work if you want to inject a dose of colour into your images.
- If time allows, please feel free to bring more than one change of clothes for your session. Consider bringing a variety of styles and textures so that we can find out what best suits the shoot.
What to wear Don’ts:
- Lots of super bright clashing colours can battle for attention. Remember shining buttercups under your chin when you were a child to see if you liked butter? Well my camera, as fine a tool as it is, will readily pick up the reflected light and render the skin tone with a colour cast.
- Slogan T-shirts or clothing with large logos – I am as much of a fan as the next person but too much going on elsewhere on your clothes will detract attention from your beautiful face.
- The same as the above applies to bold stripes, large designs or fussy patterns as they stand out and tend to draw attention from your smiles.
[/ezcol_1half]Handy to have:
- If you wear make up don’t forget to apply some pre-shoot, and bring it with you in case you need to touch up.
- If you have painted nails don’t forget to make sure they’re freshly painted and chip free, and clean trim nails for everyone else!
- A light face powder to reduce any shine on your face that may build up during your shoot, this is especially important for studio shoots as the bright lights reflect shine.
- A comb or brush and hair spray if you use it, a pocket mirror is handy to have for on location shoots.
- Lip balm for the luscious lips look – this goes for guys too! Don’t worry I’m not going to make you wear lipstick, but a smidge of Nivea lip butter is ideal to mend dry or chapped lips.
What else should we prep for?
- Pre plan for our session; coordinate outfits. Everyone in the portrait should ideally wear items that complement each other. They don’t need to be matchy-matchy, but they should make sense as an ensemble so the resulting image is as fantastic as we want it to be.
- If it’s a session that involves bare skin i.e. a maternity shoot may involve baring your bump or a newborn shoot as I tend to strip baby down to their birthday suits, avoid tight clothing on the skin for a few hours prior to the session to prevent skin marking.
- We really want to make our session together about YOU, and what look you want to achieve. Planning together is part of the process.
I am also regularly pinning new and inspirational ideas to my Pinterest “What to Wear” Board – feel free to follow and repin!
