Start With Location
It is very important to know the atmosphere that you are wanting as the background of your pictures. In my photoshoots, I always want my subjects to stand out. What better way to stand out than to wear the opposite colors of your background? Now, sometimes I want my subjects to blend in, but either way I always start with my background. Say you decide that a beautiful field with tall green grass would work best and you want to stand out. You will want to wear the opposite colors of green. If you want to blend, you will want to wear colors closest to green or wear neutrals such as earth tones. Lets learn more about the color wheel!
Color Wheel
Let's use the two pictures above as an example. In the left image she has a green shirt on which matches the background and blends her in. In the right picture she is wearing red, which pops. For this session we did want her to pop the most, so she wore red.
Why does the red shirt pop? We knew that we would be using a field with tall grass and that the colors of the field would be greens and yellows. Look over at the color wheel. Directly across from green is red. Directly across from that warm yellow is blue. This concept is called complementary colors and I personally use it a lot.
How To pick a Color scheme
Now that we learned about the color wheel and complementary colors, we can better decide further what we want to wear. Take this family below as one guide for a color scheme. They chose orange as their "pop" color. Then once they figured that out, they were able to build a color scheme around it. In this case, they went with earth tones to give it a good balance to the orange. These colors paired so well with each other and created a beautiful color scheme that popped against the background.
Who Wears the Main Color of the Scheme?
I'd say....me, because I want to stick out the most ;) but that's just me. Maybe you want your kids to stick out, or your partner, or your dog. Whoever it is, I always start with their outfits first. I'll show you my family picture, I'm wearing the big blue dress. I based my husband and my son's clothes on what looked best with my outfit.
Okayy, Okayy...so you're not me and you want your kiddos to stick out. Well perfect! Put them in your pop color.
I just recently did a family that did this and I lovvved it! I'll show you some of their family pictures to you too.
Your pop color doesn't have to be the complementary color to your background.
If you want a more neutral color scheme you can always stick with the same color as your background.
For instance, let's see green on green!
This still looks super pretty, and I just absolutely love the color green!
Add Patterns and Textures
Don't go overboard with one type of pattern or texture but adding them makes everything just look so good! If one person is wearing a flower pattern, just keep it at that one person. Same thing for flannel, stripes, or other patterns. Textures on the other hand I tend to go crazy with as you can see in this family picture. I loaded them with texture! They had waffle knit, furs, lace, and more. I even put wolf hats on all the children at one point in this session, it was sooo cute!
TAKE PICTURES of everything together
Whatever you do, don't stress! It'll all turn out I'm sure! If you want to see how everything looks together, lay it out on the floor and take a picture of it all. This can give you a good idea of what you will or won't like in your pictures. I do it all the time and it really helps. Also, I am always here to help! I LOVE picking out clothes and I even have a client closet you can borrow from if you want to! Trust me, a lot of clients use me for help, and you'd be surprised at how many use my closet, so you can too!
Still Need Help?
Don't hesitate to ask me anything. I will help you shop, send you ideas, and create inspo boards for you to get you going.
SOme Color schemes to choose from
