With fall comes family photo season and I truly believe the hardest part of family photos is figuring out what to wear (aside from keeping my kiddos happy the entire time).
While there isn't a perfect science to what you should wear in your photos, after 10+ years of shooting families and couples, there are definitely a few things that I've found look extra great on camera, so I'm here to share all the tips I've got for ya.
We just did our family photos a couple of weeks ago, so I'll use what we wore as an example (the clothing in the image above is almost exactly what we wore!).
1. CHOOSE A COLOR PALETTE
I always look in our closet to see what we have and I try and pick a palette from clothing we already own. If I have to buy a couple of pieces to fill in some spaces, no biggie, but I would rather not buy new clothes for everyone in the family.
There are really only a couple of colors I usually steer people away from. Super bright colors tend to reflect back onto the face, so really bright reds, pinks, and oranges, usually are not the best for photos.
For our family, I chose to do mostly terracottas and blues with a splash of emerald.
2. HAVE AT LEAST ONE PATTERN
For a while there, I feel like a lot of people strayed away from patterns in photos but they add so. much. interest to the images. If it's just a couple, I would say usually one person wearing a pattern is good, but with a family (like our family of 4), two patterns looks so great.
My husband wore a vertical striped shirt and my son wore a denim shirt with tiny arrows on it. I even added a splash of pattern with my leopard print mules.
3. LAYERS
Adding layers is a great way to throw in some extra dimension. Whether it's a cardigan, scarf, cool jacket, etc., layers are your friend. You also have the option to do some photos with and some without, so you also get a good variety of images that way.
Wyatt wore a little bandana to add something extra to his pretty basic onesie. It also did a great job covering up the drool he got on his onesie on the car ride there, so that was a plus!
4. TEXTURES
I love textured clothing. Whether it's lace, ruffles, a subtle texture in a knit sweater, etc. It adds some pizazz to the shot without competing with the other patterns that may be in the mix already.
This year, I wore a sweater from Madewell that had large dot texture on it as well as bubble sleeves. Both of those elements made the top more interesting than a plain sweater or top but it didn't over-complicate the overall look.
5. ADD A COUPLE OF FUN ACCESSORIES
I already mentioned Wyatt's little bandana that he wore, but I also wore some super cute statement earrings from Clay + Bloom that added a fun emerald color and also something fun to the photos. You can always add a fun necklace or hat or whatever you are comfortable in. I usually say that one or two fun accessories is great so it's not over done but looks very put together.
Overall, I think the key is to be comfortable in what you are in and have fun with it. It's so easy to overthink these things, but if you stick to a color palette and add in a few fun pieces, you're going to look amazing. Now if someone can just give me tips on keeping my children happy for an entire shoot, we'll be golden.
Men's Vertical Striped Shirt//Men's Skinny Jeans//Men's Boots
Baby Thermal Onesie//Baby Bandana
Toddler Boy Denim Shirt//Toddler Boy Slim Cords//Toddler Boy Boots
Women's Bubble Sleeve Sweater//Women's Skinny Jeans//Women's Leopard Mules//Emerald Earrings