What should I wear for my headshot or portrait session?

In general, I recommend firstly wearing something that you feel good in – not good as in comfortable, but good as in confident. Wear something that gives you a bounce in your step when you walk down the street. Feeling good is the first step to looking good in your photo.

If your shoot’s in my studio, you’re welcome to bring multiple outfits to the session and I can help you decide what will work best, but please be sure to iron anything that needs it beforehand.

If you have opted for a headshot package longer than 30 minutes, it makes sense to bring different clothing options to your shoot. This will help us create unique images for multiple purposes or audiences. So you might do casual and formal, colourful and monochrome, or you might just like to use your clothing to show another side of your personality.

Here’s a list of guidelines, rather than rules, that may help:

What’s good

• solid/block colours, bold colours and colours that compliment or pick-up your eye colour
• clothing with a strong silohette or structure, i.e. nothing too fussy
• a bit of texture – that could mean a herringbone shirt instead of plain, or layering different textured fabrics, like a knit with a shirt
• some contrast – e.g. black jacket, white shirt (for black & white), a bold stripe, or smooth with rough, such as tweed with a stiff shirt.

What to avoid

• anything overly fussy
• fine contrasting stripes, eg. black and white pin stripes, otherwise stripes okay
• colours that wash you out
• un-ironed shirts
• floppy or fussy collars
• excessive jewellery (in general); we don’t want to take away from your face with heavy earrings or necklaces. The exception to this rule is if you’re known for wearing statement pieces and it’s part of your personal brand.