Color Schemes

An aunt with FOUR nephews, all brothers. Can you imagine? The amazing thing was, all boys were the best kids you could ask to photograph: well behaved, patient and considerate, yet humorous and playful like a pack of rough n tumble puppies. None of them made any objection to having their photo taken, and my photography life for those hours were surprisingly easy. All comes down to great parenting!

The photo shoot included about 12 people, spanning 3 generations. The organizer had asked me what I thought everyone should wear. Here were my actual suggestions:
- Browns, blues, greens
- Beige, blue, light purple, yellow
- Khakis + white or gray top
- Jeans + solid brightly colored T-shirts
- Jeans + white tops (all different kinds: polos, shirts, blouses, tanks etc)
- Sundresses for ladies, khakis + light colored shirt for gentlemen (Just avoid really dark colors)

For smaller groups of people, I would have suggested red/orange tones too, but for a group of 12, if everyone showed up wearing red/orange, it would look too planned, not to mention, visually painful. Blues/greens work well for most people. I ask people not to wear black, unless we're intentionally going for a contrasty effect (e.g. a black flowy dress on a beach on a gray day looks great, or in studio on a white background). Black in a greenery background is too over powering.

Whites are OK. The thing with white is it will reflect the surrounding colors, so if everyone is wearing white in the shade, the resulting picture has a cool feel to it. In direct sunlight, white can be too bright. White is tricky.