how to prepare for your photoshoot

You’ve booked your dream photoshoot and the date in the calendar is looming ever closer. You’re excited – but also a bit daunted. How do you prepare? How do you make sure you’re at your best?

Practice

I will give you guidance and prompts throughout our photoshoot so you’ll never feel like you don’t know what to do. Having said that, practicing posing will help you boost your confidence as you’ll already have a sense of what you do and don’t like.

Practicing posing in a mirror or by using self timer on your phone will help you understand which angles you prefer and help you get a sense for how you’ll look in the photos when you don’t have a mirror in front of you (I will show you photos from the back of the camera though so you can see how great you look throughout the shoot!).

I’m all about empowering my clients, and practice can really help you feel your most powerful.

Hair

If you’re due for a haircut, get it booked in before your photoshoot! It makes all the difference.

I recommend Jaime at Salon Sin to everyone (seriously, I’ve made all my friends go there and now none of them can imagine going anywhere else either). He’s a Virgo (his birthday is the day after mine!) and at this point I trust him with my life. Which, to badly paraphrase Fleabag, is the same thing as hair.

Skin

Doing a face mask is a common pre-shoot routine to encourage your skin to be looking its best and there are so many different types out there with varying intensities.

You might want to go for a more gentle face mask like the vegan, all natural facial at Blomma Beauty in King’s Cross. Super relaxing, nourishing and good for you and the planet.

Or you might want to go for a stronger option like bentonite clay that really gets in deep to unclog your pores. If you do you’ll want to make sure you do it about a week or at least 3 days in advance as the deep cleansing process can result in spots and blemishes that weren’t there before. Doing it a few days in advance will ensure time for the pores to unclog and any resulting redness or spots to go away again.

Those are my personal recommendations and choices whenever I’m going to be in front of the camera but I encourage you to find whatever options work best for you.

Pack

Have your outfits, jewellery, props, etc set out or packed the night before so you can go to bed knowing you don’t even have to think about it the next day, let alone rush around finding things last minute.

Also make sure you pack a water bottle! Photoshoots are thirsty work and its very easy to become dehydrated.

Rest

It’s totally normal to feel nervous before a shoot. Try and get enough of hours of sleep to ensure you’re well rested for a day running around creating!

Time

Leave yourself plenty of time to get to the shoot location. Running late and arriving flustered and stressed won’t help you be in the best frame of mind to start the shoot and can amplify any pre-existing nerves.

Talk to Me

If there’s anything at all that you’re unsure of or worried about, I’m always just a quick message away.