Coming from a studio that specializes in, first and foremost, High School Senior portraits, I’m naturally going to tell you, “NOW is the PERFECT time for your senior portraits!” Right? How could I not?
Let’s be real here, when you have your senior portraits made, it needs to be when YOU love them the most. Okay, so what does that even mean?
Let me go off on a tangent. My favorite time of the year is fall and winter. So what looks better, fall or winter? Fall looks better but winter feels better, to me. I love fall because of the color change. In Alabama, particularly south Alabama, fall colors are rare and by the time some of the leaves turn yellow on certain trees, other trees are already barren. Just the other day I created a video for social media explaining this with examples from my own backyard. Red leaves, yellow leaves, orange leaves, and then several trees with no leaves at all. That’s when, visually, we’ve hit winter.
I know, I know…winter doesn’t arrive for another month, seasonally speaking. But visually, after this rain we’re experiencing passes, the trees will officially be in winter mode. We don’t get the good fall colors that other parts of the country get. We aren’t the only ones, for sure. Georgia, Florida, Louisianna, and south Texas can all relate. Winter brings with it gray colors, which can be great for the seniors wanting more outdoor-hunting-type portraits.
So when exactly is the best time for senior portraits?
I told you, I’m on a tangent!
For my own portraits, I’d prefer fall colors. Vibrant and diverse portraits come out of fall. I can wear blue, my favorite color, and have it mixed with the orange and yellows. Blue and orange are complimentary colors, otherwise known as contrasting colors. Go watch a superhero movie or a space movie. Most of the magic or space-related digital effects are going to be blue and orange. Go watch Lost in Space (2018). The reason the robots and all the aforementioned effects look so cool to your eyes is because blue and orange are complimentary colors. It’s not just because of Auburn University. Go to your local store and find the Christmas aisle. What colors do you see? Red and green? That’s because Red and green are complimentary colors for each other. Contrasting colors.
So what are contrasting colors and what does that have to do with the best time for my senior portraits?
I’m getting there.
Contrasting colors are where you take a cool tone and a warm tone, from opposite sides of the color wheel, and put them together. So let’s break it down to college football terms, since you obviously haven’t moved on from the Auburn University comment earlier.
Here are great examples of contrasting colors in college sports.
LSU: Purple and Yellow (Gold) – one of the creative things I loved about working on J.U. Blacksher high school’s athletics.
Auburn University: Orange and Blue
Notre Dame: Blue and Gold – something that often gets overlooked at Monroe County High School is its Navy and Yellow (Gold) colors.
University of Oregon: Green and Yellow (Green is a cool tone)
UCLA: Blue and Yellow (Gold)
Miami: Green and Orange
Florida: Orange and Blue – copycats
Now most colleges follow along branding colors, so the University of Alabama are Crimson (Red) and White. White can go with anything, representing ALL colors. That’s why you’ll see colors on the football field like Blue and White, Orange and White (Texas), etc. Same with Black. You see Black and Gold a lot.
Just take a look at the most recent movies coming out, including this one.
Copyright © Warner Bros. Discover
Do we get it now?
So when I am considering my portraits, I’m thinking of colors. What colors will look best in my house? Is it the greens and golds of spring? The greens and ugly of summer? The reds, golds, browns, and grays of fall? Or maybe it’s the grays and whites of winter?
Okay, so color is a big deal. But we kinda already knew that.
Yes, color is indeed a big deal. But so is comfort. If you read the paragraph above, then you can probably surmise that I hate summer. To be fair, I only hate summer in Alabama/the south in general. It’s hot, humid, sticky, and miserable. My air conditioner can’t keep up. Most days, my A/C stays steady at seventy-nine to eighty-five degrees, though it’s set to be sixty-eight at night and seventy-two during the day. This makes my electric bill go really, really high. Like, five-hundred dollars. No one likes that.
Need to go to the beach during the summer? Too bad! There are a million people already there, nowhere to park, nowhere to sit, all the restaurants are full, and traffic is a nightmare.
Want to go to the river during the summer? Sure! Just watch out for the cottonmouths, wasps, hornets, spiders (many of which can crawl on the water, some of them under the water), gators, and mosquitoes.
Want to take it easy during the summer and go visit a zoo? Fun, entertaining, and educational! Except most of the animals aren’t active because it’s too hot.
But fall and winter are phenomenal. Sure, you can’t really go into the water during fall and summer unless you’re from Canada and have built up an immunity to cold temperatures (winking at my Canadian friends…eh). That’s what spring is for, though! March through May, it’s fantastic for the outdoors on the water!
Then again, many of the people I’ve photographed love the summer months, for some reason. And those folks want their portraits to be made in June and July, for some ungodly reason! Why? Their hair is all frizzy from the eighty-to-ninety-percent humidity, sweat is pouring down that hair and their face, their clothes are wet… Just why? I don’t know the answer to that one, but I do what they want because they want it. They’re comfortable in the summer much the way I’m more comfortable in the fall and winter; when I don’t even turn my heat on unless it drops below twenty degrees.
Okay, okay…so you’re saying spring, fall, and winter are the best times for senior portraits?
For me, yes. But when it comes to your senior portraits, you need to consider what makes you more comfortable and what makes your house look a hundred times better.
What are some other factors?
Well, let’s consider what you’re wearing, what you want to do in your portraits, where you want your portraits made (outside, inside, or a destination trip out west). These are kind of important questions to ask as well. You don’t want to put on your camouflage for hunting portraits in July. You don’t want to wear your big Christmas jacket with the fuzzy fur that you love so much because it matches the beanie on your head in August. And if you join me next year on several destination portrait experiences out west, you don’t want to go during peak tourist season.
So is right now a good time to give you a call for our senior portraits?
One-hundred percent! Right now, as of November 15th, there’s still some fall color outside. Most of the leaves in my front yard came down yesterday, though, so we have to act fast. Same for family portraits and children portraits.
We’ve got several options for each of these milestones for you. I want to show you looking amazing, cool, beautiful, and at your best. So if you’re like me, now is when we need to be rolling around in the leaves for some fun and phenomenal portraits.
0 Comments