Preparing for your Portrait
For the Best Portrait:
When more than one person is to appear in the portrait, clothing can make or break a portrait.
Creating just the right look in a portrait takes a little planning to make it happen. Professional portraiture captures the spirit and mood of the subjects. Clothing, accessories and props are intended to enhance the look of the subjects, not distract attention away from them. Attention to detail while selecting the clothing will help to eliminate disappointment.
The goal of any fine portrait is to direct the viewer’s eye to the face(s) in the portrait. All other elements should be secondary.
To help achieve this, the most important thing is that everyone in the portrait must be coordinated. In portraiture with more than one subject, color coordination is essential. While everyone does not have to be dressed identically, it is best if everyone is wearing similar shades.
As both a dark and a light background will be used for the Seasonal background, either deep colors or lighter shades will work well, so long as everyone in the group maintains the same look as clothing coordination is still essential.
In any family portrait, regardless of location or season, stick to solid colors only and avoid all patterns, including plaids, checks, floral, stripes and even logos. The only exception to this would be if you have chosen a special portrait “theme” such as a favorite sports team.
Guidelines and Tips to Remember:
- Avoid having your hair cut less than a week before the session.
- Stick to solid colors. Patterns of any kind (plaids, stripes, floral & logos) are distracting.
- Bright colors, such as pink and orange, will overwhelm the face and ruin a portrait.
- Light colors that approximate flesh tones will overpower the face and make the subject look unusually pale.
- Darker clothing is slimming
- All subjects photograph the best in medium to dark tones, whatever the skin tone.
- Choose simple garments within the same tonal ranges. When subjects appear in a mixture of light and dark tones together, there is a visual confusion – as the light color comes forward, and the dark color recedes. When this happens, one person becomes dominant and appears heavier than in reality.
- Proper clothing selection makes the difference between a portrait that appears to be a group of seemingly unrelated individuals and one in which every member of the family “belongs” to the group.