Preparing For Your Shoot - Dengrove Studios

Preparing For Your Photo Shoot

Here are some helpful tips and recommendations to prepare for your photo shoot and make it a success:

Get a good night's sleep and stay healthy. If you're tired, it will reflect on your face, your overall appearance and your attitude. Try not to stress your body before the shoot. We recommend no alcohol, sweets, physical stress or heavy eating either. Drink lots of water. Continue with your daily exercising.

Women - Shave or wax your legs and armpits a day or two before your session. If you're modeling lingerie or open swimwear, take care of the bikini line. If you shave right before the shoot, the skin irritation will negatively impact the outcome, especially with digital photography.

Men - Make sure that you are clean-shaven before your session. Retouching can hide blemishes, but not razor stubble.

Hair. Do not get your hair cut, permed, or colored too close to your session date. Hair needs a few days to settle in after a new cut. Also, it is probably best that you not try a radically different style just before your session.

Makeup for photographs should be slightly heavier than normal, as you would wear for an evening out. However, too much makeup tends to give you a painted look and too little might not show off your features. A translucent powder is helpful to eliminate shine, especially for oily skin. Since most portraits concentrate on the eyes, great care should be taken to make them look their best.

Do not overdo sun tanning for a photo session. Tans look great, but in moderation. Sunburn can be an expensive problem. It causes facial shine, red noses and cheeks, strap marks, hat lines and peeling, which are fixable but at an additional cost.

Clothing. Bring a variety of clothing styles to capture different facets of your personality. Wear clothes you will be comfortable in. If you are uncomfortable, it will show. Simple and casual outfits that are kept to solid colors; denim, khakis, blacks, greys and earth tones almost always look good. Patterned or complicated clothing should be avoided.

If you are planning to pose in swimwear, lingerie, or nude: wear loose fitting clothes and undergarments, or better yet, no undergarments for at least two hours before the session to prevent marks on the skin. It can take a very long time for these marks to disappear, and may waste your limited amount of time allocated for the portrait session.

Props - Feel free to bring anything you would like to be photographed with.