I say it all the time, however I still think that communication is the most important aspect of portrait photography, especially for posing. You may start to discuss this during your first contact with the client. To make the best possible portrait, you need to start before a subject arrives at your studio or location. A few simple tips suggested to subjects can make their session go better, and help them enjoy the portraits produced during the session, which hopefully translates into more clients and repeat business. Let's face it, as I always say "most of us do this because we love it" however the equipment is not free. Nothing detracts from a subject’s face more than clothes covered in busy patterns and prints. Your attire depends on the type of portraits we're looking to create.

Things don’t always work out as we'd like and we often have to work with what we have. Although you might prefer that a portrait subject bring solid colors to a shoot (not WHITE if possible), that doesn’t always happen out here in the real world. So when the clothes aren't working you can try shooting tight. This will avoid the possibly distracting clothes.

Cropping tightly helps the portrait somewhat but it won’t always work to minimize the busy pattern of a subject's clothing. When this happens you can try changing to Black and White.

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