It’s been a decade of capturing Professional Portrait Sessions for our clients and 4 years (& over 200 blog posts) here on our photography website since we made our first Style Guide here on the blog-! Jumping right in, your professional Portrait Session you should be comfortable, but since it is a luxury service with high end printed images that you’ll be passing down through the generations, these guidelines will help you dress to the nines so that you & your face are the focus of your Portrait Session-! We’ll be covering it all from what clothing looks cohesive together in group Family Portraits or Engagement Sessions to what style choices distract the least from your beautiful faces and personalities!
(Remember: These are not hard rules. These are merely guidelines to help you shine the most in your Professional Portrait Sessions! We’ve been photographing people for weddings, families, headshots, and more professionally for over 10 years, so after over a decade of looking at all of YOU and creating these physical representations of you & your memories, we’d love to pass along some advice on what will help you shine/ love the images that come out of your Session!)
Portrait Session Clothing Guidelines:
We can only control so much that goes in to a Portrait Session. We can’t force anything (like the weather, foliage on trees, or clothing), but there are definite ways in which you can ensure a gorgeous Portrait Session! One of the two most important things in our books is THE CLOTHING that you choose-! (The other most important thing is your attitude/ confidence). Since we don’t hire stylists to come out and clothe you, it lands on your shoulders to pick a wardrobe for your Session that will be most flattering to you, be versatile, and have everyone taking in your face & personality (rather than a bright primary color shirt or distracting large space of skin)! With the right wardrobe we can help you look stunning in your Portrait Session anywhere on earth- even a literal town dump. Within this blog post we hope to equip you with enough stylist knowledge for you to be able to shine from the inside out on the day of your Portrait Session-!
The Most Flattering Shapes of Clothing:
On the bottom: PANTS or skirts/ dresses to at least the knee-! Reason: This is so you can sit & bend without showing a lot of skin so that your face (rather than any other area of skin) remains the focus in the photographs.
On your top: A (non-polo) button-up or a basic one-colored shirt are preferred. Reason: You can layer things like sweaters or vests onto them easily. (Polo short sleeve shirts do not look "timeless," rather they look like more tourist-y or ready for golf).
On your top: Your sleeve should go to at least the elbow. Reason: This helps make your arms look slim and again ensures that there aren’t any large areas of skin to distract from your face. (*Clothes should be thought of as a frame to help showcase the most important part: Your face/ you! Vast areas of skin pull the focus away from your face).
Wardrobe Additions: Layering clothing as well as diversifying textures of cloth help create interest in the photo. Reason: Scarves, sweaters, vests, jackets, & more can help give textural interest, show a heightened sense of fashion, and help you all look dapper. You can also change up the layers a bit during the Portrait Session and it can look like a different wardrobe-! (Very subtle pattern in a clothing item or 2 can be ok).
The Most Cohesive & Least Distracting Color Stories:
Shoes: Wear dark shoes and socks. Reason: Especially for white socks they stick out like a sore thumb in photos. Though we can Photoshop things to be different colors, it often doesn’t come across as realistic when trying to change the color of socks due to the textures and shadows.
Overall Color Palette: Stick to Muted Tones like Gemtones (maroon, forest green, navy blue), Neutrals (grey, olive, light blue, tan, etc), or subtle color schemes that aren’t primary colors or neon colors. Reason: Muted tones in clothes are the best way to highlight YOU. They help make you the subject of the photo rather than your bright red, orange, neon pink, crayon blue, or lemon yellow clothing which are quite distracting and not timeless. Bright colors also make you look larger, so they're good to avoid in photos. *Though we've found that more muted deep colors like mustard/ dark yellow, dark rust orange, & powder pink colored scarves are actually nice accents! Deeper & more muted OR pastel tones of these bright colors make great accent pieces on solid-colored scarves, cardigans, and such!
Coordinating the Palette with Everyone included in the Portrait Session: Choosing just a few colors for everyone's clothing in a portrait is helpful. Reason: By everyone working within a color palette of things such as "jewel tones" (burgundy, navy, forest green), "neutral tones" (tan, light olive, light blue), or pastels you are able to notice the people first since the clothing is cohesive and not distracting or attention pulling to one person. Matching exactly is actually very distracting and outdated (i.e. all white tops & blue jeans), so making sure that there is diversity within everyone’s clothing is KEY!
Coordinating Top & Bottom Colors: Choosing similarly toned clothing for your top and bottom helps. Reason: By choosing both a dark top and dark bottom OR light top & light bottom you're keeping everything even. If you have a white top and dark pants you will look top heavy. Wearing a white bottom and dark top will make you look bottom heavy and all eyes will be on your legs which will stand out the most in the photo. The goal is for there to be no distractions from your faces!
Other Style Tips:
Hair: Don't get a haircut right before photos. Reason: You want your hair to look natural, so give it at least a week or 2 to fall in place after a haircut. (It’s also nice to have a bit of stubble on men to give your face/ jaw a bit more dimension)!
Engagement Session women: You can totally wear a cute white dress if you want-! Some of our Engagement Session couples opt for outfits alluding to their upcoming wedding. Reason: White dress signifies a wedding. It's not necessary, but does help make it look more like pre-wedding photos.
We hope that this Style Guide/ Clothing Guideline serves you well! We’ve been so proud of our clients over the years for their willingness to read through these and show their own take on these tips during their Family Portrait Sessions, Engagement Sessions, Headshots, Senior Photos, & Infant Sessions! We do our best to make you feel at ease so that your confidence can shine through, so all you have to do is show up with these clothes that will also help you shine!
————————————
Unrelated:
We’ve been printing and delivering printed photo packages to clients today after a very fun & eventful weekend of meetings with some amazing Chicago couples for wedding consultations-! We have some final products to package up and deliver tomorrow for Family Portrait Sessions, then after another new meeting with a local couple tomorrow evening, we’ll then be setting our focus on updating the photos on our website for the first time in over a year-! We have a new website layout that we hope to implement as well, so we have quite a bit of work on the backend of our website to be doing. We’ve been so busy photographing, editing, blogging, printing, packaging, & shipping over the past record year of our business that we’ve had no moment to cull through our images and update the main sections on our website-! We still have 6 print packages to fulfill whenever we see the final choices for those Senior Photos, Family Portrait Sessions, & Weddings come in, so though it is “low season” for Professional Photography, we rarely get a day off unless we push for it to spend time with our pets. We hope that you enjoyed this Style Guide & that it prepares you well for your next Portrait Session-! We’ll catch you next Weekly Wednesday a week from today-!