Your session is coming closer (yay!) . Now it’s time to start planning what your family will wear on the day of the session.  You don’t want this to be something that is rushed, or later on you wish you had chosen a different outfit.  I’m here to help! Below I have outlined a few things to consider when arranging your outfits and what to look out for.

1-     Themes in your home: This may seem odd. What does your home decor have to do with family picture outfits? A lot actually. Do you like bright colours? Neutrals? Since you will be hanging these photos in your house you want to make sure the colours of your clothes go with the colour scheme of your home.

2-     Coordinating colours not matching: Long gone are the days of everyone wearing a white shirt and matching. You do not have to have everyone buy a white shirt and jeans. I highly recommend wearing soft or neutral colours.  If you wear bright red, yellow or green, the colour may reflect onto your skin and wouldn’t give a flattering look. Still allow your personalities to shine with colours and patterns but keep this in mind. The easiest way to arrange outfits is to pick a couple of colours and choose clothes that will fit in this colour scheme.

3-     Limit the patterns: Personally, I prefer not having busy outfits as it can take the focus off the people, but don’t let that stop you from enjoy having an outfit in the mix that has all the colours in it. However, not everyone in the photo should wear patterns as it may distract the final image.

4-     Say no to characters: Yes, your little one may love their Toy Story shirt, but you may want to skip it for the family photo session. Just like patterns, characters on shirts can be pretty distracting. Characters, like too many patterns, can make your photo look too busy.

5-     Avoid all white or all black clothing: As we mentioned earlier you would rather do coordinating colours than all white. Another reason to avoid white is because it is quite easy to blow out parts of your shirt causing it to lose its detail. What I mean by blowing out is the shirt no longer has any of the details, it is completely white as if the sun is shining brightly on it.  Same can be said with all black, it’s easy to have clipping on black clothing and the detail is lost. With clipping, this is where the black clothes lose the depth and details. Trust me you don’t want this and neither do I!

My final piece of advice for coordinating outfits: If you are completely stuck and don’t know what to do, take a photo and send it through to me, I’m more than happy to help.