How to Dress for a Successful Photo Shoot

Are you a Warm or a Cool? I never had any idea what my skin tone was. I knew one thing, I burn really easily. Duh! This is a sign of a cool skin tone. But not all cools burn & not all warms tan beautifully. It gets more confusing as you search around the internet trying to figure this out.

Why should you care you may be asking? Well, when we take your photo we do our very best to make sure we capture who you really are. We are concerned about lighting, shadows, filtering, blah, blah, blah... What we can't do is dress you. If we could, we would. What you wear goes a long way to making you look like your true self, and not just personality wise. If you are wearing the wrong colors for your skin tone you can look washed out or if things get really bad you can look yellow or blotchy red!

So I trudged through the mire of information and came up with, what I think is a fairly concise way of determining what skin tone you are. Once you've got that figured out you will find choosing make-up, clothes and even hair color much easier. So here we go...

Lets conduct a couple of easy and painless tests...

The Vein Test  Sounds scary but it's not. All you have to do is look at the inside of your forearm, if the veins are Blue, then you may have Cool Skin Tones. If the veins appear Green, then you may have Warm Skin Tones.

Gold or Silver Test  What looks better against your skin? Try to be objective, I know that white gold, platinum and silver are all the rage and that yellow gold got left in the 90's by most people. Personal preference aside, what actually looks better against your skin, especially up near your face. If you are simply stunning in Silver then you are most likely a Cool Skin Tone. If you look glorious in Gold then you are most likely a Warm Skin Tone.

Standard Color Test  If you look good in White or Black you are likely a Cool Skin Tone. If you look much better in Off White or Brown then you are a Warm Skin Tone.

Towel Test  This is the last test I swear! Grab a nice white bath towel, scrape your hair back into a ponytail, wash that gorgeous face, put a mirror near some direct natural light (sunlight), now hold the white towel against your face. If your skin appears to have a yellow color to it then you are a Warm Skin Tone if your skin appears blue, then my darling, you are a Cool Skin Tone!

Genetics When all else fails look at your Mama or your sister. Chances are good that you share skin tone. So if your sister always seems to look stunning, take notice of the color of her make-up, jewelry or clothes. She may have figured all this out and never told you, because sometimes sisters do that. They like to be the fairest in all the land. Especially big sisters.

During all those tests I kept saying "you may be this skin tone" or "you are likely this skin tone", that's because these tests are not conclusive because, get this, there is also something called Neutral Skin Tone. If you are a lucky devil and you have Neutral Skin Tone that means you can wear anything and you can skip this whole blog post. Cools are most common, then Warms then Neutrals.

I have collected some images from around the world wide web to show the three main hair colors with the two most common skin tones. Lets start with blondes because we all know they have more fun regardless of their skin tone.

Blondes

Red Heads



Brunettes

O.k. now that you know what skin tone you are what the heck should you wear for your photo shoot? I think we can help you there as well.

Rule #1

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Hello Kitty as much as the next girl, and my sister and I used to rock as much Esprit and Guess as we could get our hands on. My mom however would not let us wear printed t-shirts on school picture day. No way. She said "someday that won't be cool anymore and you'll wish you wouldn't have worn it." Well, she was right. Nothing dates a picture quicker than a novelty tee or a shirt with a brand name plastered across the chest. As for the heavy prints, it simply detracts from your pretty face and oddly enough it can clash with the setting you've chosen. If you are wearing a heavy floral print we are not going to be able to take your picture by flowers. Think E.T. blending into the pile of stuffed animals.



Rule #2

Jewel Tones. They just look good on almost everyone, but look really good on Cool Skin Tones. So go out and buy yourself a beautiful blouse, yes I said blouse because that is the lovely girlie way of saying shirt, in a jewel tone. You will love it and you will wear it with jeans, skirts, or even slacks. O.k. so lets not say slacks.

Rule #3

So rule #3 really shouldn't be a rule because it only applies to my Warm Skin Tone ladies. Earth Tones. Earth Tones are gorgeous and I wish I could wear them. I have Earth Tone envy. On a Warm Skin toned girl these muted earthy greens, browns and slates go from blah to deep, rich, and beautiful. Rock it if you've got it Sister! All us Coolies will be jewel toned-green with envy.

I'm out of rules. But I put together a few layouts to show you some good photo shoot outfit options that are classic and not going to be dated in two years.

This next set is important. If you have a favorite pair of Jeans and you just can't decide what top to bring, bring them all. We got ya covered if you need to whip off your top to do a quick wardrobe change.

No worries, won't take picture of you changing. Our mom told us that would be rude.

So if you are stressing about what to wear, do the favorite jeans and as many tops as you want to swap out. Simple. Done. Then we'll go have ice cream before DQ closes for the year.

I hope this was helpful to someone out there. I know it was actually quite helpful to me. I'm a Cool and proud of it baby! Also, these neat sets I've made that make me look like I'm a professional at fashion layout and should be in NYC working for ELLE magazine, well I made them on a very fun website called Polyvore. Go check it out.