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Choice of clothing

This really depends on the occasion. If you want to impress your friends (or just the opposite gender) with your sizzling hot looks – go for something sexy and revealing.

Of course, that sort of look is probably not appropriate if you want to give the picture to your grandma as a Christmas present. In this case, something more conservative is much better.

The basic tip here is to just make sure you feel comfortable with the clothes – because the camera will pick it up if you don’t feel happy about how you look. And don’t let others talk you into wearing something you don’t want for a photo – it should be your decision.

Make-up

Should you wear makeup in your photos?

If you are a woman – yes. The amount and type of makeup will wary, but at the very least you want to hide skin irregularities and blemishes. You can (and should) apply more concealing makeup than usual – the camera is very forgiving of the amount of makeup you use, but not of the skin blemishes! When it comes to lipstick, blush, eyeliner, shadow – it depends on the image you want to create.

When you have a lot of soft light in the photo-shoot, use bolder and stronger makeup – as this will primarily shape your looks in the picture. When using harsher light, then the bone structure and shape of your face will play a stronger role and you need less makeup. For a professional photo shoot, you might get your makeup done by a professional – although it’s sometimes expected that the model should be able to do the makeup herself.

If you are a man – well… it depends on you comfort level with the makeup… and the zits are possible to remove in the computer afterwards as well. A rougher quality to your skin is expected anyway.

Adjusting the picture in the computer

Having had your photo taken, having showed off your best poses in front of the camera – that’s still only one part of the work in achieving the perfect photo. A lot of this happens in the post-processing of the picture in the computer – using either professional image editing packages such as PhotoShop or the more inexpensive ones perhaps bundled with your operating system.

Depending on the quality of the camera, you might have to do more or less work on your pictures in the computer afterwards. You will be able to do many different things in a picture editing software – from adjusting errors in colours which the camera might have created, to doing some cosmetic editing. It would take too much space in this article to detail all the things you might do – but here are some general things to consider:

Fixing the colours – sometimes the white does not look quite white, pictures taken indoors have a strange colour cast, or the colours look just dull and unexciting. Usually there are some quick automatic functions for those adjustments in the software packages. Probably something called “autocorrect” or similar, as well as additional colour, saturation, levels and contrast adjustments. This helps to quickly fix some basic things in the picture.

Another very common adjustment is the one dealing with sharpness. If the photo does not look sharp enough, there are functions to improve this – usually called “sharpness” or “un-sharp mask”. Don’t overdo this though – a picture that looks abnormally sharp might become too distracting for the viewer.

Then there are other, more advanced functions – for example adjusting the texture of your skin and remove blemishes. The simplest way is to just make the whole picture lighter, but you can also use more specialized tools such as retouching, blur, or the “heal” function in PhotoShop.

All the pictures seen in the fashion magazines are retouched – often so well, that you don’t even realize that this has been done. Eyes made larger or more intense in colour, skin smoother, teeth whiter, thighs and arms thinner, breast shape different, legs longer, etc. Of course, the fewer faults the original image has, the less time needed to re-work the picture!!

Adjusting the pictures is complicated – it’s thus perhaps better to have someone with experience to do this, rather than trying it yourself (beyond some basic colour adjustments). Otherwise it’s too easy to change the picture to such an extent that the changes become distracting for the viewer!