Helpful Tips and Policies for Portrait Sessions

Beach Portrait Tips

Remember your beach portrait is about you, the first things you want to notice are your smiles and expressions not what you are wearing!

You do not want your clothing competing with your smile!

If clothing is too busy or loud your eye will not know where to look.

NO strips, No decals big on shirts, NO florals. (Except for little girls) J

Colors should be the same or complement each other.

If you lay out your tops and your eye keeps going to one particular shirt it probably does not work well with the others. Just like with strips and florals, wherever that one person is placed in the photo that is where your eye will go to in the picture.

Trousers and shorts should all be the same except if you are mixing white, khakis or browns bottoms. (My favorite look!)

Do not mix jeans with khakis.

If everyone is wearing white tops, and one person is wearing cream, his or her shirt will look dirty next to the whites.

A mixture of shirt or blouse tops is nice, it gives the photo originality. If everyone is wearing white it looks great with different styles.

Keep in the color wheel, all pastels, all earth tones etc.

Do not wear white if you do not look good in white!

There are so many great colors to choose from.

Blue is one of the colors that everyone looks good in!  No it’s not too much blue on the beach. Remember the Atlantic Ocean isn’t really blue!

Love, skirts and sundresses! JUST wear a slip if possible, if breezy sundresses tend to go between legs!

Sunburn is not becoming and I cannot take out sunburn in Photoshop.

If you have young children do not keep them on the beach all day, take them back early so they are rested and not hungry or exhausted. Trust me; your child who is always happy on the beach will have a meltdown. It’s often hard and frustrating for the parents to pull them back into happy mood when they are exhausted from playing in the ocean and being in the sun all day.

GO to my website for examples, I have three galleries of beach portraits to give you great ideas! 

IMPORTANT NOTICE BELOW, please make sure EVERYONE in your party is aware and is respectful.

LEAVE YOUR CAMERAS BEHIND!

You’re paying for a professional to get the best family photo and beautiful memories for a life time. When family members or friends pull out their cameras and cell phones people do not know where to look, especially children. Eyes are looking in every direction and what could be a great image is now ruined. I do have a flow and a rhythm to get the most out of your session. If family members’ start taking photos with cameras or cell phones I will just STOP shooting, it’s too frustrating. I will JUST put my camera down and you will be losing out on some great images! I will leave extra time at the end of the night for your own personal shooting time if you would like. If you or your family members would like to take some cell phone images, I encourage you to come out 30 minutes prior to our session time. This will allow you time to capture the cell phone images that you would like. This way family members won't be so tempted to pull out their cell phones during the session time. This will allow Donna Andrews Photography to have the subjects full focused attention to create great images and memories of your time at the shore. 

You really do want to get the most out of me!!

Please feel free to email or call with any questions!

Oh don’t worry about your shoes we will be kicking them off at the path!! J