A tip on “What to Wear” for a photo session is too accessorize! One way to do that is by wearing a hat! They are awesome but with hats comes a few things to note, and I want to share those with you today.

Fedora Hats

It is so fun when ladies (and guys) wear Fedoras. They can add a pop of color, add another element of visual interest to the photo, is 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.

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 did this with a branding session and it worked great to add variety to the session! Take a peek!

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.

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.)

Ways to Work with Hats

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

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 to add variety to their final gallery.

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!

Below is an example from my branding session how the light on my face was affected by the hat. You can see that the left photo that my the photographers right side view of my face and forehead was darker than my left side. And then 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. In this photo everything is pretty brightly exposed except for my face, so when I was editing these, I should have taken a Lightroom brush and brightened up that area a bit. But these are two great examples of how the light on your face will be darker if you do wear a hat. (Not wrong at all, and I have used these photos on social media, etc, but just something to note.)

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.