We do a lot of portraits of dog owners with their dogs. To make the portrait the absolute best we always recommend to the owners what they should wear. The concept behind this is you want to be in color harmony with your dog(s). If you wear a really bright red shirt and your dog is black—though black and red can look good together—guess where the eye goes when someone looks at the photo? To the brightest color. The dog gets lost in the image. You don’t want to upstage your dog.
So we recommend tones that will be in harmony with your dogs fur color. Whatever the dominate color of the fur is you want tones that are compatible with that color. Usually you cannot go wrong with earth tones for a brown colored dog. Deeper reds like rust or a maroon —browns, tans and the like are good choices.
For a predominately black dog think grays or even black. For a white dog you can have any shade of white or even cream—as most white dogs aren’t pure white.
Solid colors are best as stripes and crazy patterns can be distracting. We recommend long or 3/4 length sleeves, especially for women. Jeans are okay for pants. If you have any questions we are happy to help you with this, just give us a call. We choose backgrounds based on your dogs coloring so it’s nice when you can be in color harmony with your dog.
This is one reason why we love having a pre-session consultation—even if we need to do it via phone—before the session so that you can be fully prepared. Of course it’s always better to have the consultation in person so your dog can come along and get used to the smells in the studio, but we are happy to work with your schedule.