I am always looking for suggestions on things that would be helpful to share with all of you here. Recently I had a request for a What to Wear blog post for families that are interracial. And I couldn’t help but think, “Why had I never thought of doing this before? Of course I should create a post about this!” I got really excited to put together this post and do some research to provide the best advice and options for you… but the more I thought about it and looked, the more I realized – if you are working with a professional photographer – the advice I offer you should be pretty much the same as the advice I would offer to any family. Let me explain…

Initially I thought perhaps there would be colors to avoid. And I suppose – it’s still not a bad suggestion. For example – I probably wouldn’t wear a dark brown or black shirt while holding my daughter because there’s a strong likelihood that she will blend into or fade into my clothing choice and not stand out the way I would want her to. And honestly I probably wouldn’t put her in these colors either. But the same would be true for a person with a paler complexion – they most likely would not wear white or cream or colors that might blend in with their skin tone either.

Additionally, depending on who the photographer was, I probably wouldn’t put any of us in bright white. The contrast between her beautiful dark skin tone and the bright white of our clothes may, for an untrained photographer, be too extreme and thus difficult to properly light and expose. What I mean by that is an untrained photographer might expose for the shirts and then my daughter might be underexposed or very very dark. Or the photographer might expose for my daughter and our shirts might be completely blown out and almost glowing. Even a photographer who doesn’t know how to expose and just uses the automatic settings will most likely struggle to properly expose in this scenario and end up with photos where either our shirts are too white or our daughter will be too dark.

However… a skilled photographer should know how to pose and light a family regardless of what outfits you bring or wear. I still hold that the most important factors are unifying colors and avoiding wearing too many busy patterns. So choose a palette that makes sense for your family. My little family has always done greens, browns, yellows, and creams. However, with the addition of our beautiful daugher – we may just omit the brown color from our palette or we may choose an entirely different palette. (I’ll admit – I’m a fan of putting her in pinks so our coordinated outfits have been including pinks, creams, and blues lately.)

And honestly, if you’re worried about how well you’ll stand out in your images due to your beautifully created family – I’d encourage you to seek out a professional in order to eliminate any of this worry. A professional will know how to light, compose, pose, arrange, and style you so that this will not be a concern at all! Now for some fun, I decided to add some images I found of some really stunning interracial families so you can see there are no hard rules. Just be yourselves and let your beauty and love shine through!

(Just a reminder – none of these are my own images. They are simply examples I found through google to give you some ideas of what your family could wear. And I think these images really reflect the lack of limitations that are present. You can truly wear whatever feels like you!)

If you’re ready to schedule your newborn or family session – shoot us a message or give us a call! I’d love to work with you to capture beautiful images you will cherish forever!