Have you ever wondered – Should I wear a hat to my next photo session? Well that is a great question! And the answer is YES but I want you to note a few things! One of my favourite tips to help people plan their outfit for their next photo session is to accessorize by wearing a hat! They add visual interest and are beautiful!

Hats are awesome but can add or take away from a session. I want to share those tips and tricks with you today.

The best type of hats – Fedora Hats

It is so fun when ladies (and guys) wear Fedoras. Hats can add a pop of color and add another element of visual interest to the photo. It is also the “cherry on top” completing the outfit and it allows the person to hold it for a few shots for added variety to your session. If a person is going to wear a hat, I would suggest, starting without it so it doesn’t flatten the hair, or be ok with taking it on and off for through out the session.

If you are looking for a fedora hat, check out Gigi Pip hats! They are beautiful!

Here is one of my FAV photos of a lady wearing a fedora hat! When a lady wears a hat, usually she is shorter so she will be looking up at her man showing her face which will allow her face to have more light.

Now with Fedora Hats, if they have a longer brim, it could bend the brim when we do photos with the couples faces being extra close like this example. The left photo is adorable and I love it, but you can see the potential “brim squish” if they were tip their foreheads together. In the right photo you can see the “brim squish” that happened when their faces got extra close with their super sweet chemistry. Now I LOVE this image and the genuine emotion and love, but being a professional, the bend of the hat is something I notice and I wish I could correct.

I recently brought a hat with me to my branding session for added variety.

Hats give you something to hold on to

Hats are a prop that will give extra variety to a session. From not wearing on, to wearing it on your head, to holding on to it. Here are some example of one session with a variety photos with these variations.

Different kinds of hats: Beanies or Toques

If you want to wear a wear a hat but don’t want the brim to get in the way, a toque/beanie is a great option. Plus on those cooler days it helps to keep ya warm! (This works for guys or girls or kids!)

Guys and Baseball Hats

If you want to read all about my tips on Guys and Baseball Hats, you can check out the blog post here. But my two take aways are, they do block your mans face when he looks down at you, and start the session without wearing a hat, and then add the ball hat towards the end. Take a peek at that post to learn more about this topic.

Here are some examples of how hats can work and then how hats can hide faces. (NOTE: In each of these sessions, they got A TON of variety where I could see their faces even with the hat on.)

Tips for wearing hats during a photo session

Hats have the potential of blocking faces. So to combat this I would do several things:

• Take some shots with the hat on and off
• Get them to tip the hat up if possible
• Not get them to bend their head to look down as much and look down more with their eyes
• Or just embrace that is the nature with wearing hats, and try to get a wide variety of head tilts and poses

Here are some hat examples

Here are some different examples with past sessions and hats verses no hats.

In this example, I did get this super fun couple to kiss with both head tilts because I knew that the hat would affect the final image of how much we could see their faces.

Another example of the intimate kiss that would have blocked her face from the baseball hat. The left photo was the first one taken, but then I saw it blocked her face so I got him to kiss on the other side.

In this example I got this adorable couple to some with her hat on and some with it off. This will add variety to their final gallery giving them more options!

Just another example of how a hat can add variety to a session in a matter of seconds. But here you can see how his face in the left photo is darker than the right, and that is because of her hat.

Here is an example of how the backwards hat works in our favour so we can see her beautiful face!

Wearing a hat can create darker shadows on your face

Below is an example from my branding session how the light on my face was affected by the hat. On the left photo that my the photographers right side view of my face and forehead was darker than my left side. On the right photo you can see that my face was much darker than my jacket area because not only was the hat was blocking all of my face but I was looking down too. Should I have worn a hat to my photo session – yes! I loved the look of it and how it gave me more options to choose from.

These are two great examples of how the light on your face will be darker if you do wear a hat. This can be corrected in editing, but it takes longer to do. (Not wrong at all, and I have used these photos on social media, etc, but just something to note.)

So I hope this blog post helps you decide if you should I wear a hat to your next photo session!

Check out this blog post about “What to Wear Tips” for lifestyle sessions.

If you want to read all about my tips on Guys and Baseball Hats, you can check out the blog post here.