Senior Portraits Hair & Make-Up Tips

I highly recommend all of my senior clients invest professional hair and makeup. If it is in your budget, hiring a professional for your hair and makeup will make a drastic difference in the quality of your photos and senior portrait experience. You are already making a large investment in your senior portrait experience, so why not make it the best it can be?! So, why exactly is it so important?

Reasons To Hire A Profession for Hair & Make-Up

• They are trained professionals When you are investing in a professional photographer, you want to make sure that the images look their absolute best. While it’s not absolutely necessarily, professional hair + makeup artists are TRAINED to do hair + makeup so that they photograph well. While your makeup may look AMAZING in person, it will look completely different on-camera, and these professionals are trained to know the difference! They will conceal spots you don’t like, contour your face so it looks the best in every light, use colors that compliment your skin to make it look flawless, make your eyes POP with false lashes + shadows, manicure your eyebrows to perfection and more! 
• Less Stress Preparing for a senior portrait session is stressful in and of itself. Trying to do your hair + makeup by yourself can make things ever harder. Professional camera equipment is designed to pick up every little detail in an image (even details that the eye can’t see) so hiring a professional makeup artist is the best way to go.
• Who Doesn’t Love Being Pampered!? I don’t ever want my seniors to feel like their portrait session is just simply “taking pictures”, I want it to be an EXPERIENCE. So, if my seniors arrive after an hour of being pampered + beautified, the entire experience has already started on a good note! If a senior arrives frustrated or stressed, it can affect the entire experience, including the way you look in photographs! 

We’ll go ahead and send over a list of recommended vendors if you’d like, just shoot us a quick message! 

If this is not in your budget, DO NOT stress over it! I’ve had a LOT of my seniors skip this portion of prep and just do their own make-up. Just plan to wear slightly heavier make up than normal, including blush and lipstick/gloss that are at least slightly darker than your lip color. I also highly recommend false eyelashes. These can be purchased for very affordable prices at CVS or any pharmacy in the area.

At Home Hair and Makeup Suggestions

• Keep It Natural – We want you to still look like YOU, so sometimes just a step up from what you naturally is the perfect amount of drama to make you feel a step up but not too out of the box.
• Wear Nude/Blush Lip Colors – If you’re not used to wearing lipstick, a huge pop of color will really make you feel uncomfortable and not confident during your session. We want you to still look like YOU, so sometimes just a step up from what you naturally is the perfect amount of drama to make you feel a step up but not too out of the box.
• Pop On Some Lashes – While we can fake or photoshop a lot of things, lashes isn’t one of them. Practice at home putting on fake lashes and they’ll dramatically make a difference with making your eyes pop for your pictures.
• Avoid Products With Sunscreen – Sometimes products that contain SPF make us shiny, we definitely want to avoid that at all costs! Glistening foreheads aren’t pretty in pictures 😉
• Don’t Use Too Much Hairspray – Sounds counter productive right? But it’s true! Too much hairspray doesn’t give you hair natural bounce or movement! We love a free flow session so sometimes we want you to play with your hair!