When more than one person is to appear in the portrait or when a special stylistic effect is desired, clothing and prop choices can make or break a portrait.

Skin tone considerations
Wheather working with light or dark complexions, the objective is always for the face to dominate the portrait.  Accordingly, skin highlights bust be the lightest, brightest, or most intense areas of the portrait.  So when a medium to dark background is used, all subjects photograph best in medium to dark tones, whatever the skin tones.  Your photographer will guide you on what backgrounds will work best for the effect you are trying to achieve.

Clothing for Small Groups
Couples or small groups should choose simple garments within the same tonal ranges.  When subjects appear in a mixture of light and dark tones together, there is visual confusion.  As the light color comes forward the dark color recedes and forces the eye to go back and forth between the two in an unpleasent way.

Clothing for families
In a family group, proper clothing coordination is critical.  When decorating a home, a major concern is to coordinate the colors and tones of the walls, carptes, drapes, and furnishings.  Similar coordination is necessary when selecting clothing for a group portrait.  Choose clothing in the same tonal range so that no single member of the family stands out because the clothing is too light or bright as compared to the rest of the group.  Proper clothing selection makes the difference between a protrait that appears to be a group of seemingly unrelated individuals and one in which every member of the family belongs to the group.

Creating Style and personality
Our goal is to create portraiture as individual as the subjects we photograph.  Our tools include various styles, techinques and settings that make each portrait a unique artwork.  For example casual clothing compliments portaits made in the outdoors while images with story telling content or which portray special interest of the subject make decorative personal statements.

Tags: clothing choices, portraits, props

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Guides and Guidlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.