1) Who’s Taking The Photo?

We’ll talk about you in a moment, but the first detail is who is taking the photo? How do you find an outstanding photographer to take an outstanding portrait of you? It’s not as hard as you might think.

In other blog posts I talk about the importance of hiring an experienced photographer - and it is important. When you look at my work you are looking at the result of years of study, practice, and more study, and experimentation, buying good equipment, and more study and more practice. Rinse and repeat! But all of that is meaningless if the photos don’t speak to your heart.

Please, ask your photographer about experience, but only after you have looked at their photos. This is the starting and ending point.

And one more piece of advice here. We often get requests from clients for a certain kind of look. We are capable of quite a variety of looks and are always happy to give it a go, but I suggest you will have a lot more success looking at the photographer’s website than at Pinterest. Why? Because on Pinterest you are looking at someone else’s style and hoping your photographer can get you an approximation of that. But on the photographer’s website you are only asking them to give you an approximation of something they have already done. I suggest that is much more likely to succeed.

2) Where Will The Photo Be Taken?

Sometimes an incredibly beautiful scene in the background will create synergy, such as the photo down below. And sometimes that background competes with us for attention. And because of that, most of the time, portraits look better with simple backgrounds. The term in the business is a “clean background”, as opposed to a busy background. So the location matters, but not in ways you might think!

3) Look Your Best

Women, I’m going to say something that might seem obvious but hair and makeup matter. I see so many women that don’t get their hair and makeup done before coming to me. Yes, I do know photoshop but there’s a big difference between making a good photo great and a mediocre photo good. Let’s start with a good one, OK?

Men, let’s shave and trim the facial hair.

Clothing - #1 is good fit. #2 is good color and #3 is pattern. If you are unsure about color and pattern go for dark and simple.

Dark and simple, clean background

Dark and simple

4) Have Fun

Are you someone that feels like you always look terrible at photos? Go back and look at some of your old photos. Were you nervous? Self conscious? Most of the time that’s most of the problem. If you think you’d just as soon be in the dentist chair as in front of a camera, then that’s what your photos are going to look like. I cannot emphasize this enough. Have fun. Go for it. You have nothing to lose because you’ve been looking so bad in photos up until now. Can’t be worse. Give it a try, please!