How To Prepare For A Professional Photo Shoot

Between senior portraits, headshots for your new job, or wedding photos, some pictures simply mean more than others. These images that capture some of the milestones of your life are going to be framed in your living room, or at least placed into a scrapbook, and will forever resemble a pathway back to that moment, or what that moment in your life represented. As such, it goes without saying that you’ll want to look, dress, and feel your best when the photographer lines up to snap that picture.

But what about beforehand? How can you prepare yourself in advance for that magical moment?

Here are three things we like to tell our clients to do before the time to “say cheese” at Tumbleston Photography is upon them.

Pick Your Color Scheme

There may not be such a thing as a perfect color scheme, but more often than not, there certainly are “wrong” answers as to what colors you should wear. For example, unless you’re the owner of a store that specializes in selling bright orange suits, it’s usually not considered a good idea to wear a bright orange suit for a professional photo, as that tends to clash with most backgrounds. You should put some time into thinking about which colors go well with certain backdrops, and if possible, plan out the background with your photographer ahead of time.

Select Your Background- And Do A Practice Run, If Possible

Speaking of planning out the background with your photographer ahead of time- in some situations, you may not get this chance. For a professional headshot at work, your boss may just tell you to show up at a certain time and smile, with your design input completely taken out of the equation. But for photoshoots that you have some element of control over, such as wedding photos, senior portraits or family photos, you have as much creative control as you’d like. Do you think your family would look cute playing in a field of sunflowers for your Christmas card? Take your family to a sunflower field and find out. Think your fiancé and you would look great against a beach background? Drive to a nearby lake or pond and see for yourself.

Practice Poses

Do you have a certain side, or angle, that you think presents the best version of you? Great, because you’ve now got ahead of the game on this one. But even still, there’s work to be done. You’ll want to know the exact angle of your head, and your body’s posture, that looks best, and for a professional photoshoot- as opposed to a picture with your friends at the spur of the moment- you have time to figure this out. If you don’t have a preferred side or angle that you like to be presented best in photographs, no worries. Take time in front of a mirror, or have somebody take practice pictures of you so that you’re able to figure out which poses you like to be displayed in photographs best.