Don‘t wear the whiskp uniform (white shirt khaki pants) unless you would do the matching thing on any normal day.
Don’t do the matching thing unless you don’t mind the matching picture hanging on the wall in your child’s grandmother’s entry hall.
Avoid white shirts, except as an underlayer. White shirts don’t usually flatter skin tones of light-skinned people in photographs. Light-skinned people look best in rich, earthy tones that contrast with skin tones. Dark-skinned people look best in rich colors too because a white shirt can often result in too much contrast. Plus, Robin wants to expose the photographs for the best presentation of the skin tone of faces. This can sometimes cause a white shirt to “blow out,“ or lose details. So during the shoot, Robin compensates, tweaking exposure to find a balance. Because Robin has to work harder to get a proper exposure when you’re wearing a white shirt, it is more likely that she’ll miss good expressions because she was fiddling with camera settings. Make sense?
Dress your family as you might dress your living room. Coordinate colors based on the tones you love, but avoid primary colors because the camera emphasizes those. Avoid competing patterns. Look in clothing catalogs for ideas on how stylists put clothes together on a page. Avoid any one person being in a particularly light or dark color. Avoid horizontal stripes. Avoid shirts with logos. Concentrate on classic clothes in solid, rich colors for the best effect. Start with your child’s favorite outfit, and build the rest of the family’s clothing around that. A chocolate brown polo is an awesome color for dad and can easily be worn by mom too, in a completely different, feminine style to avoid the matching thing. Plan to change clothes during the shoot. You’ll be surprised by how different your pictures will look, and how you’ll love one outfit more than the other, but you might not expect the one you love to be the one you thought you’d love.
The one exception to the no-white rule: for beach pictures, it is acceptable to wear white and can give a classic and clean look.
Put your clothes on before the shoot and look in the mirror. When looking in the mirror at your photo shoot clothes, turn your body all sorts of ways. Your clothes should fit you well, but not be tight.
If there’s potential for getting messy, like wading in a creek or eating birthday cake, don’t wear your dry-clean-only angora sweater handmade and given to you by your grandmother’s great Aunt Mable.
Wear more makeup than you normally would (think under eyes and in dark spots). Bring your foundation in case you need a touch-up.
Wash your rings and get a manicure and/or pedicure (you know you deserve it anyway!).
Do not let little girls wear short skirts without some sort of boy short system underneath. We don’t want to see her Princess Ariel undies when dad throws her in the air or while you’re twirling her sweetly.
Wear clothes appropriate for the activity. Don’t wear business clothes and dress shoes at the beach.
Don’t wear white pants or white shorts unless you have evaluated this plan for avoidance of all hints of panty lines. Likewise, avoid too-tight shirts that show bra bulging around the underarms and in the back.
Don’t take it personally if I suggest a clothing change. The camera can see things you might not think of.