Clothing guidelines for portrait sessions.

• Clothing should be carefully selected to compliment the most important part of the portrait, which is the face. Bright colors overwhelm and distract attention to the face. Darker clothing helps bring viewer's attention to the face. Solid dark colors in muted tones work best.
  
  
• Avoid patterned clothing, especially small-checkered patterns. Large or small patterned plaid, or stripes are very distracting and can cause terrible distortions.
  
  
• Wear clothing appropriate for the type of portrait. A turtleneck or a v-neck top tends to frame the face beautifully. Long sleeves almost always look better.
  
  
• Clothing below the waistline should be darker than above. Otherwise, even light jeans worn below a darker top could easily attract attention to the lower part of the body and away from the face.
  
  
• Clothing for group portraits should be carefully selected to blend the bodies together. First, decide whether the basic tone of the clothing will be warm-toned (browns, etc.) or cool-toned (blues/grays/blacks, etc.) while following the above recommendations.
  
  
• For groups, match clothing if possible or at least keep the colors harmonious across the group. Avoid one person wearing drastically different color clothing than the rest of the group.
  
  
• Eye makeup should be blended - no sharp demarcation lines between colors. Avoid white above or below the eyes.