All of our shoots are done on location, and we’d love to come to your home! There are a few things that you can do to make your space photogenic. The following paragraph is taken from Glen Johnson’s book “Digital Wedding Photography.” It’s geared toward dressing rooms, but the info can be applied to your space during a portrait session.
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Decorate the girl’s dressing room just as carefully as you would any other part of the wedding location, because a large portion of your pictures will be taken here. When you choose a location, pick a room with some ROOM and lots of natural light. On the wedding day, have your girls clean up all the non-wedding messes such as piles of blue jeans and tennis shoes or other clothing that is not wedding related, but don’t make the room look too neat; messes are okay if they’re wedding messes. Empty boxes and bags should be placed somewhere outside the dressing room. It looks wonderful to have all the dresses hanging and shoes lying around on the floor, but they look awful if they’re still in the box, or if they have piles of plastic wrappers and cardboard boxes lying next to them. Flowers also look much better in some sort of vase instead of the cardboard boxes the florist packed them in. Cover up any ugly furniture with plain white drape cloth.
Lighting is extremely important for the girl’s dressing room. The windows absolutely must be open to bring in the natural light. If you have anything distracting or unsightly that would be visible through the open windows, place some light gauzy curtains over them to cut back on the view while still allowing the light to come in. If you have no window light, think romance, and get creative. Use lots of candles or little Christmas lights placed around the room.
Shafts of sunlight streaming in the windows may look great to human eyes, but that extreme level of brightness in an otherwise dark room is a photographer’s nightmare. If you must use a room with direct sun on the windows, put up some curtains to diffuse it. You can also put light cotton cloth over the outside of the window in order to cut down on the direct sun. If you want the absolute best lighting for your dressing room, pick something with large, north facing windows – this is a photographer’s dream come true.