Children’s photographer, creating your what to wear guide clothing for outdoor photo shoots

 

Over the next 2 months I will be running a number of children’s photography workshops all around finding great light and using environmental backdrops.  Ahead of my photography training days, I brief my families on what to wear to ensure that THEY are the focus of the images and not their clothing. I believe it is very important for a Children’s photographer to liaise as much with a family in advance to get the best, and widest variety of images, they possibly can.

 

” We want the child to be the first thing we see in an image, not their clothing”

 

 

Using a colour wheel as inspiration

 

As your photography style and vision grows you will start to develop a stronger sense of how you like to style children for your shoots. I personally like strong contrast so will often add a pop of colour which would be considered a complimentary colour on the colour wheel.  There are 3 different ways that you can use a colour wheel for inspiration:

1. Complimentary colours – opposites attract so choosing colours on the opposite side of the colour wheel.

2. Analogous Colours  – Colours next to one another.

3. Triad colours – This is more complex where you use colours from every third of the wheel.

 

 

 

Creating your own bespoke colour pallets to share with families

 

As technology moves on, the colour wheel has now become an interactive tool in the form of ‘Coolers‘. This is one of the most useful free tools I have come across online and not only can you use this on your desktop, you can also install it as an app on  your phone!

To start you identify one colour as a base colour. For example, being Summer there are a huge amount of Summer greens around, like the ones shown below. I would dropper off any of these greens in Photoshop to get a HSB reference, and drop this into Cooler and then lock that colour in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are 4 colour sets generated, using the same green as a base, and you can see how they move between complimentary, analogous and traid colours mentioned above.  My style leans towards the 4th panel which keeps a more neutral based with the light blue and green, and then adding a pop of purple or magenta.

 

Using Pinterest to share your style & colour vision

 

Once I have generated my colour charts I then share these with the families in the form of a pinterest board like the one shown below. I show example of boys and girls of different ages. If you would like to follow my board you can visit it Nina Mace Photography Pinterest board .

 

 

 

 

Feel free to share any tools you use for deciding on your outfits for children’s outdoor photo-shoots in the comments below.

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