When striving to create a successful family portrait, the efforts to achieve harmony in clothing will pay the biggest dividends in the quality of your finished portraits.

We've been photographing families for over 25 years, and we realize that what you wear has a significant influence on how much you will enjoy your finished portrait.

"Trendy" clothing will date a portrait and make it something you won't enjoy even after only a few years. Large patterns, prints or graphics on clothing will draw more attention to the clothes than to you, the subject.

Our most important recommendation is to wear solid coloured, non-trendy clothing. Small patterns of muted or harmonious colours are okay.

Keep the tonal range (lightness or darkness) consistent throughout the group. Choose either medium to light tones, or medium to dark tones for all the people in the group. If you have 9 people wearing dark colours and one person dresses in white, guess where the eye will go.

It's also important to try to achieve colour harmony in the portrait. The same rule applies to choice of colours -if everyone is in cool colours and one person is in red, they get all the visual attention. The best choices for colours are neutral to cool colours (blues, greys, greens, browns, earthy colours, etc.) and to try to avoid "hot" colours such as reds oranges, yellows, mustards, etc. Please understand that these are just guidelines - an entire family dressed in red could look very good. Discuss your clothing ideas with us.

Clothing style should also been considered. A group dressed in formal clothes with one person in blue jeans may not be as successful.

Eyeglasses can cause reflections that obscure the eyes, so the best thing to do is borrow a pair of empty frames from your optometrist. Most optical stores are willing to loan you an empty pair for a portrait session if you leave a security deposit.

• Avoid "trendy" clothing
  
  
• No loud patterns, prints or graphics - solid colours are best
  
  
• Everyone in similar tones - medium to light OR medium to dark
  
  
• Everyone in similar colour tones - neutral to cool colours are best
  
  
• Consistency in style - casual, semi-formal, formal, etc.
  
  
• Eyeglasses - frames with no lenses if possible

Good luck with your clothing selections, and thank you for making the effort to help us make your portrait a success. We look forward to creating beautiful images for you.