How to look good in your Wedding (or any) Portraits


Alaska Wedding Photography Elegante Light Posing

Our beautiful bride above is stunning in her photos!  Want to know the secrets to looking gorgeous in your photos?  Keep reading!

I don’t think this is a stretch to say that all of us have had a really horrid photo taken of ourselves at some point. Think back to what that may have looked like (sorry to put you through this but stick with me). Were all the wrong body parts emphasized, was your face washed out, shiny, or were your eyes sunk in? What went wrong that we ended up looking like that?

For this discussion, I’m going to assume that we did our hair, make-up, dressed up to put some real effort into trying to look good and that it somehow fell short. Take a look at any A-lister actress on the red carpet and you will begin to notice that they are well aware of how to work the following to their advantage:

  1. The camera sees the world in 2 dimensions. Picture yourself as a cardboard cutout standing square to the camera. For most people, this means you are showing the camera your body at its widest points for shoulder, waist, and hips. This is great for a guy wanting to show his manly muscles but that’s generally not the look our brides are going for! Our clients hear this all the time from us “turn your feet 45 degrees from the camera and then twist slightly at the waist back towards the camera to open back up the torso, then look back towards the camera”. With this simple move, we narrow the shoulders, waist, and hips and you visually lose weight faster than any diet so that the camera now sees a much thinner cardboard cutout of you. What you are doing is creating beautiful curves with your posing! (Hold your applause to the end. wink)
  2. Things closest to the camera look bigger and things farther from the camera look smaller. This can both work to your advantage or turn around and bite you if you don’t pay attention. Want to make your hips appear smaller?  Shift your weight to your back leg and push your booty back away from the camera.  Have broad shoulders?  Turn your shoulders 45 degrees to the camera to get one farther from the camera. Have smaller eyes?  Get your chin out and down to bring your eyes right into the camera (this also disguises a little extra under the chin). Want to make your behind to appear curvier?  Shift your weight into the hip closest to the camera… instant Nicki Minaj.
  3. Work the Light. We all know what really bad, flat, and harsh lighting looks like. At Elegante Light Photography, we have such a passion for crafting beautiful light, it is literally in our name! We know that you won’t always have us around for every photo taken of you (although you may want to consider that as an option wink), so here are a few more tips that we share with clients:
    • Matte make-up is your friend. The camera reads and records the light bouncing off of you and translates that into your photo. Any part of your face that has make-up with shimmer, luminance, or sparkle is going to potentially photograph brighter or shiny. This may be perfect for your lips, but does not look great when your reflective foundation reads as an oily face in your photo.
    • The face is fairly flat so using blush to contour can really add depth (and color) to cheeks. A word of caution here (maybe 3 or 4 words), blend, blend, blend, and matte! Remember that the goal is to create sun-kissed cheeks or a natural blush.  Along these same lines, remember to add lipstick for a little pop of color.
    •  Go easy on the dark eye make-up, especially if you have deep set eyes! As photographers, we use lighting techniques to bounce light back into the eyes but even we struggle with countering the effects of very dark eye make-up. Let your eyes, not your dark eyelids, take center stage in your photos. Think eye enhancement for your portraits and leave the dark shadows for date night.

So to recap, when getting ready for your portrait or big day, think matte make-up, don’t forget the blush and lipstick for color, leave the dark eye-shadow for another time, don’t square off to the camera unless you like the football player look, create some curves, and push those problem areas to the back.

Happy planning!

Elegante Light Photography

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